ALLENTOWN, PA. – The jury has reached a verdict in the trial over a federal discrimination lawsuit filed against the City of Allentown.<\/p>\n
Former Allentown human resources employee Karen Ocasio claimed she was fired because she was outspoken on the issue of racial and ethnic discrimination within the city’s workforce.<\/p>\n
The jury found the City of Allentown will not be held liable following a federal discrimination lawsuit. They ruled that Ocasio was retaliated against, but the city also had legitimate reason to fire her.<\/p>\n
Ocasio’s attorney Marc Weinstein said it took a lot of courage for her to bring this case to trial.<\/p>\n
“In fact, she did prove that the Mayor retaliated against her. We know that from the jury verdict; the problem, unfortunately, is that there was a significant mistake made in the jury verdict form because once the jury found that she had been retaliated against, that should have been it,” said Weinstein.<\/p>\n
The city’s defense team previously said during closing arguments the Mayor has no animosity and never had an agenda against Ocasio.<\/p>\n
The defense cited an independent investigation, which they say said in part that Ocasio was the most complained-about employee.<\/p>\n
Ocasio’s lawyer is making the case that Ocasio was promoted and was a good employee, citing testimony from the city’s former HR director Nadeem Shazad on Tuesday.<\/p>\n
“So, we need to get these mistakes corrected, and I believe that with this court, which presided over a fair trial, we believe it will get corrected and that this injustice will ultimately be remedied,” said Weinstein.<\/p>\n
In a statement, Mayor Tuerk said:<\/p>\n
“We remain committed to making sure the City is a welcoming and respectful place to work and where every employee feels respected and supported.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"ALLENTOWN, PA. – The jury has reached a verdict in the trial over a federal discrimination lawsuit filed…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":287812,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[214,119,121,120,232],"class_list":["post-287811","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-allentown","tag-_homepage_top_stories","tag-allentown","tag-allentown-headlines","tag-allentown-news","tag-allentown-area"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/287811","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=287811"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/287811\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/287812"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=287811"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=287811"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=287811"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}