A 61-year-old former housekeeper for an Inglewood hotel is suing the business, alleging she was wrongfully fired in 2019 after contracting breast cancer and told she was “too old and crippled.”
Lucia Rodriguez’s Los Angeles Superior Court lawsuit against the Los Angeles Adventurer All Suite Hotel on Century Boulevard near Los Angeles International Airport alleges wrongful termination, age and employment discrimination and disparate treatment of medical condition. She seeks unspecified compensatory and punitive damages in the suit filed Thursday.
A representative for the hotel could not be immediately reached for comment.
Rodriguez was hired at the hotel as a housekeeper in 2013 and in March 2017 was diagnosed with breast cancer, requiring her to undergo chemotherapy and go on disability leave in November of that year, according to her court papers.
Rodriguez returned to work with the medical approval of her oncologist in September 2019, but she was demoted to part-time status, the suit says. On Nov.16, 2019, she alleges her supervisor called her into the office and told her, `You are being let go because you are too old and crippled.”
Rodriguez, who was 59 when she was fired, has suffered lost earnings, embarrassment, humiliation and mental anguish and incurred medical expenses, including money spent for psychological treatment, the suit states.