A jury has found that Northwest Arkansas Hospitals must pay $105,000 in damages to a former surgical tech employee who complained of sexual discrimination.
Arkansas Democrat-Gazette reports that the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) filed the suit in the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Arkansas in Fayetteville on behalf of male surgical technician Efrin Chavez, who was hired in January 2022 at Northwest Medical Center in Bentonville.
The EEOC argued that two female doctors “refused to allow Chavez to assist with deliveries or take patients’ vitals and told the hospital’s director of women’s services she should not have hired a male technician,” reports the newspaper. The EEOC stated that “even though numerous complaints were made, the hospital didn’t follow its own policies and refused to end the discrimination.”
The hospital’s owner at the time was Community Health Systems, which this year sold its four Northwest Arkansas hospitals to Freeman Health System. The newspaper stated Community Health Systems did not respond to its requests for comment.
