Federal law may allow a $3.5 million discrimination lawsuit against the security contractor for the Savannah River Site in South Carolina to continue even after a federal judge found the statute of limitations had passed for the case, according to newly hired legal counsel for the plaintiff.
Marcialena Brown, an African-American woman, did not realize she had been subjected to racial discrimination by Centerra-SRS until after the statute of limitations had expired, her lawyer said in a Feb. 12 filing. Also, because Brown was representing herself when she filed suit on July 22, 2019, Brown was not privy to the federal law that could help her in the case, according to the objection.
Columbia, S.C., attorney Katherine Myers filed the document in response to a Jan. 29 report from U.S. Magistrate Judge Paige Gossett that upholds the statute of limitations in the case.
Brown is suing Centerra, along with employees Raymond Smith and Jerry Stevenson, saying she was unfairly fired in May 2015 for accidentally leaving her M4 rifle unattended in a women’s bathroom on site for five minutes. In November 2018, Brown said she learned a white female employee had kept her job after accidentally leaving her gun in a bathroom unattended two months earlier. The employee was only issued a warning, according to Brown.
She filed the suit nine months later, arguing she received a harsher punishment than the white employee even though they made the same error. The case is being heard by Judge Sherri Lydon in U.S. District Court in South Carolina.
Centerra denied that discrimination played a role in either decision, and added two more points: that the statute of limitations had run out on Brown’s claims, and that only employers can be sued in a case involving Title VII of the 1964 Civil Rights Act, which prohibits discrimination against employees based on sex, race, color, national origin, or religion. The company says Brown’s suit is invalid because she is also suing two employees.
Lydon sought U.S. Magistrate Judge Paige Gossett’s opinion in the Title VII case. Seeking a magistrate opinion is common with such cases.
