Pilot Air Freight, an international freight shipping and logistics company, will pay $400,000 to settle a disability discrimination lawsuit brought by the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission.
The suit, filed in September 2021 in U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Georgia, alleges that Pilot Air Freight discriminated against former employee Thomas Hunt by terminating him when he requested time off for biopsy testing. The EEOC says the Pennsylvania company violated the Americans with Disability Act.
“Employees with disabilities should be supported — not cast aside,” Marcus G. Keegan, regional attorney for the EEOC’s Atlanta District Office, said in an announcement about the settlement. “We are glad Pilot has agreed to training its employees and we are hopeful that no other Pilot employees will go through the discrimination Mr. Hunt faced.”
Hunt was hired as a manager in April 2019 and was eventually diagnosed with cancer. He needed time off work for testing and medical visits in June. That’s when he was terminated due to company “restructuring,” just days before his health benefits were scheduled to begin, the lawsuit says.
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Company officials told Hunt he had been laid off due to his short tenure with the company, but the suit alleges that several employees hired after him were not terminated.
After Hunt’s termination, Pilot Air Freight posted 85 job openings nationwide and hired 25 people in Atlanta, where Hunt had worked. The company also listed a role for a job with identical responsibilities of Hunt’s former role but with a higher salary, the lawsuit says.
In addition to paying $400,000 to Hunt, the company is required by the consent decree to train its employees on the ADA.