Woman awarded $20.5M after alleging racial discrimination at State College area workplace

A Black woman was awarded $20.5 million earlier this month after a jury found she was racially discriminated against while working at a State College area employer, and she asked a judge this week for another $1.65 million to cover legal fees.

Former American HomePatient customer service representative Patricia Holmes accused her supervisor and a coworker of joking about the N-word and creating a hostile work environment before she resigned in 2020. An all-white jury agreed.

In requesting the additional compensation, attorney Thomas B. Anderson wrote Holmes invested “significant time, money, and emotional energy in her pursuit of justice.” Anderson stands to receive 40% plus reimbursement of costs if Chief U.S. Middle District of Pennsylvania Judge Matthew Brann approves the request.

Holmes’ employment with the home health care service, which began in October 2019, soured almost immediately. She was the only Black employee at the location, 2437 Commercial Blvd., during her time there.

Just two days after Holmes was hired, coworker Beverly Hibbert used the phrase “Oreo baby” on several occasions, including once in an attempt to defend herself from accusations of racism after she said the N-word, according to court documents.

That same month, a respiratory therapist placed a white hood over Holmes’ head as part of a test to see if she was properly wearing a mask. Location manager Timothy McCoy, according to a court document, said it was “ironic seeing a Black person with a white hood over their head.”

The therapist told McCoy the comment was “awful,” but he asked others in the office to videotape it because he felt it was “funny to see a white woman putting a hood on a Black woman’s head.”

In March 2020, according to a court document, McCoy asked Holmes what she thought about the use of the N-word. She said it was “an ugly word” that should never be used.

After some more back-and-forth, McCoy — incredulously, Brann wrote — said he would “Google it.” While McCoy showed Holmes the search results, Hibbert enunciated the slur. Then they laughed.

That conduct from a supervisor, Brann wrote in a July 2023 opinion, was “shocking.”

“McCoy was laughing as his employee was humiliated with the use of one of the most offensive racial slurs contained in the English language, and could even be viewed as having encouraged the use of that slur,” Brann wrote. “A jury could conclude that no reasonable person would view this behavior as anything other than malicious, and that AHP simply chose to ignore the severity of McCoy’s conduct.”

Holmes lodged her first formal complaint about racist conduct the day after. The investigation, Brann wrote, quickly learned “this wasn’t uncommon behavior” for Hibbert.

The judge wrote that her actions were “highly offensive and inexcusable,” adding in a footnote that she “had an unfortunate history of such behavior.”

McCoy was issued a written warning, the company’s second-lowest level of discipline. The company said it felt that was appropriate because he had no prior discipline and had been with the company for about 20 years.

”We had taken into consideration malicious intent versus just poor judgment and we just didn’t feel that there was malicious intent and felt that we could coach him and move him along and help him improve,” a human resources employee testified during a deposition.

That response, Brann wrote, could be viewed by a jury as “markedly deficient.”

“McCoy had a history of making, to put it generously, racially insensitive remarks to his only black employee and, at a minimum, condoned racist statements and behavior from Hibbert, who had a pattern of offensive behavior,” Brann wrote. “Despite McCoy’s behavior over a period of months, AHP issued only a written warning — one of the mildest forms of discipline that AHP could impose — and this was not in response to McCoy’s racially insensitive behavior but, rather, was in response to McCoy having permitted Hibbert to behave in an unprofessional manner.”

Hibbert was initially issued a final written warning, but was fired after she placed tape over her mouth and said it was “the only way she didn’t say anything to get in further trouble.”

At least one of Holmes’ coworkers resigned because of McCoy’s behavior and because he allowed other inappropriate behavior to continue. The woman said she felt “so miserable that (she was) crying all the time.”

Another coworker testified it was “honestly horrible” coming to work when Holmes was being discriminated against. Holmes resigned in July 2020.

At the end of a three-day trial, the jury awarded Holmes $500,000 in compensatory damages. Jurors also awarded her $20 million in punitive damages, which are meant to punish defendants for particularly egregious conduct.

High punitive awards are also seen as a chance for jurors to send a wider societal message and a way to deter others from the same abhorrent conduct in the future.

In Holmes’ request for more money to cover her legal fees, Anderson described it as an “exceptional verdict.” The company offered to settle the case in March for $450,000.

An email left Friday with the attorneys that represented American HomePatient was not immediately returned, but the company told PennLive it disagreed with the verdict and the $20.5 million penalty. They plan to appeal.