A home health care company is being sued by a former employee who alleges he was discouraged from applying to head the company’s IT department by executives who said he would be perceived as “just another white guy.”
The plaintiff, Chance Jamison Daniels, also alleges in his Los Angeles Superior Court lawsuit that DispatchHealth Management LLC gave favorable treatment to female employees and that he was wrongfully fired in 2023 because of his various complaints. Daniels seeks unspecified compensatory and punitive damages in the suit filed Friday, alleging, among other things, wrongful termination, discrimination, retaliation and intentional infliction of emotional distress.
A DispatchHealth representative did not immediately reply to a request for comment.
Daniels was hired in late May 2022, but the suit does not state his job title. He is white and Christian and was granted a religious exemption from the company’s mandatory coronavirus vaccination policy, so he was required to work from home, according to the suit.
However, although he was not allowed inside corporate offices due to being unvaccinated, he was told to attend executive summits, interviews and other in-person meetings by sneaking in or to follow others in, but to do so out of site of specific managers, the suit states.
“As a result, plaintiff was led to feel and was treated like a second-class citizen because of his Christian faith and need for a religious accommodation,” the suit states.
Daniels saw deliberate DispatchHealth efforts to hire and retain female employees to the disadvantage of their male counterparts regardless of qualification, the suit alleges. Women workers also were given additional rights, benefits and privileges, the suit states.
Daniels was interviewing for a job as head of IT in April 2023 when the CPO and COO expressed concern about the optics of promoting “just another white guy,” leaving the plaintiff “deeply offended” because he believed he was well-qualified for the position, the suit states.
Daniels complained to human resources about gender and racial discrimination, but a representative “simply laughed” and eventually Daniels was shunned from his team and his access to vital IT tools and communications were ceased, the suit states.
A month later, Daniels was scolded instead of praised for his discovery of an alleged data breach involving private medical information of 100,000 people, according to the suit, which further states that the plaintiff was terminated on May 30, 2023.
Daniels has experienced both lost income and emotional distress since his termination, the suit states.