Lawsuit: Race-Based Request Sidelined Michigan Nurse
The person you have to feel most sorry for in all of this is the poor child, who will be raised by a bigot. How far should hospitals go to accede to patient demands about care?
The lawsuit accuses managers at Hurley Medical Center in Flint of reassigning Tonya Battle based on the color of her skin.
The man approached Battle, while she was caring for his child in the hospital’s neonatal intensive care unit, asking to speak to her supervisor, according to the complaint filed in January by Battle’s attorney.
She pointed the charge nurse in his direction.
The man, who is not named in the filing, allegedly showed her a tattoo that may have been “a swastika of some kind” and told her that he didn’t want African-Americans involved in his baby’s care.
The request, according to the lawsuit, made its way through management ranks, and was granted. Battle’s manager called her at home to tell her she would be reassigned — and why, the suit says.
She was shocked and in disbelief, her attorney Julie Gafkay told CNN affiliate WNEM. “She was very upset. She was very offended.”