{"id":289015,"date":"2026-09-18T16:08:08","date_gmt":"2026-09-18T16:08:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/289015\/"},"modified":"2026-09-18T16:08:08","modified_gmt":"2026-09-18T16:08:08","slug":"jury-delivers-mixed-verdict-in-allentown-federal-discrimination-trial-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/289015\/","title":{"rendered":"Jury delivers mixed verdict in Allentown federal discrimination trial"},"content":{"rendered":"

ALLENTOWN, Pa. \u2013 A former Allentown employee is claiming victory in her discrimination case against the city, but a mixed verdict leaves the result up in the air.\u00a0<\/p>\n

A federal jury found Karen Ocasio\u2019s firing by Mayor Matt Tuerk almost three years ago was motivated in part by her reporting of racial-discrimination complaints within city government.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Ocasio\u2019s attorney, Marc Weinstein, declared her \u201cthe winner\u201d and said they will ask the jury to \u201cput a financial price on the emotional distress caused to her,\u201d while seeking lost pay.\u00a0<\/p>\n

But the eight-person panel also found Tuerk did not retaliate against Ocasio; he had legitimate grounds to fire her from her job in the human resources department, court documents show.\u00a0<\/p>\n

That gives Allentown officials reason to believe the case is settled in their favor.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The jury “found the city not liable in the discrimination case,” Chelsea Koerbler, Tuerk\u2019s communications manager, said Thursday in a statement.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe have declared Karen to be the winner, but we need the judge to agree. We believe that he will.”
\u2013 Marc Weinstein, attorney for Karen Ocasio\u00a0<\/p>\n

The trial \u2013 which played out in Allentown and Philadelphia federal courtrooms<\/a> this week \u2013 is not yet over, though. <\/p>\n

Weinstein has asked U.S. District Judge Joseph Leeson to issue a final, favorable verdict for Ocasio.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cWe have declared Karen to be the winner, but we need the judge to agree. We believe that he will,\u201d he said.\u00a0<\/p>\n

She showed the jury there was a \u201cbut-for\u201d causal link between her reporting of discrimination and her termination, so it should not matter if there were other factors in that action \u2013 if she didn\u2019t air those allegations, she wouldn\u2019t have been fired, Weinstein said.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cEven though the jury found that other issues were in play, that there were other reasons, she (still) wins because the jury found but-for causation between her firing and her complaints of the racial and ethnic climate in the workplace,\u201d he said.\u00a0<\/p>\n

And Weinstein is asking Allentown City Council to \u201cmake this right and remedy this injustice with Ms. Ocasio, whether the mayor agrees that she\u2019s the winner or not.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

He also wants them to issue another vote of no-confidence against the mayor<\/a>, the same action council took days after Tuerk fired Ocasio almost three years ago.\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"ALLENTOWN, Pa. \u2013 A former Allentown employee is claiming victory in her discrimination case against the city, but…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":289016,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[119,121,120],"class_list":["post-289015","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-allentown","tag-allentown","tag-allentown-headlines","tag-allentown-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/289015","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=289015"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/289015\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/289016"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=289015"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=289015"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=289015"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}