If you’re a woman, you know how annoying and inconvenient dealing with your period at work can be. After all, unexpected leakage and sudden onsets don’t discriminate. But one Georgia woman’s situation went from awkward to unjust after she claimed that two period incidents got her fired.
Alisha Coleman worked for more than 10 years as a 911 call taker for the Bobby Dodd Institute, a job-training company for people with disabilities. Coleman says she was fired from the Bobby Dodd Institute in 2016 after “experiencing two incidents of sudden onset, heavy menstrual flow” while going through pre-menopause.
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“I loved my job at the 911 call center because I got to help people,” Coleman said, according to the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU). “Every woman dreads getting period symptoms when they’re not expecting them, but I never thought I could be fired for it.”
Coleman is suing her former employer with the help of the ACLU. Her case was dismissed by a district court in February, but the ACLU and additional counsel filed a brief last week with the Eleventh Circuit Court of Appeals last week, citing that periods and pre-menopause should be protected under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act. (The Civil Rights Act prohibits employers from discriminating against employees on the basis of sex, race, color, national origin, and religion.)
“Federal law is supposed to protect women from being punished, harassed or fired because of their sex, and being fired for unexpectedly getting your period at work is the very essence of sex discrimination,” Galen Sherwin, Senior Staff Attorney at the Women’s Rights Project of ACLU, said in a statement.
“Getting fired for an accidental period leak was humiliating,” Coleman said. “I don’t want any woman to have to go through what I did, so I’m fighting back.”
