Human Rights Commission finds reasonable grounds in pediatrician’s termination, orders further review

At a recent meeting of the Maine Human Rights Commission, commissioners voted to find reasonable grounds to believe that Central Maine Healthcare (CMHC) discriminated against and retaliated against a pediatrician after she raised patient-safety concerns and a gender-discrimination complaint.

The commission’s finding follows a contested hearing in which attorneys for the health system argued investigators relied on stray remarks and an inaccurate timeline, and the complainant’s counsel said senior leadership reacted to her escalation of safety concerns with hostility.

The commission’s decision matters because a reasonable-grounds finding opens the matter to conciliation or further legal proceedings under Maine law; commissioners said the record showed at least a plausible link between the provider’s protected activity and the decision to terminate her employment.

Respondent Harper Weisberg, appearing for Central Maine Healthcare, urged the commission to affirm the investigator’s recommended finding of no reasonable grounds for discrimination and retaliation. Weisberg told the panel the employer’s “legitimate nondiscriminatory reason for the termination” was that the complainant’s “souring of relationships with supervisors beyond repair … negatively affected the work environment,” and argued the investigator improperly relied on comments by nondecision-makers and an inaccurate timeline.

Complainant counsel Maria Fox pressed the opposite view, telling commissioners she was asking them “to follow the investigator’s recommendations on the whistleblower protection claim regarding her termination” and to find reasonable grounds on the discharge and retaliation claims. Fox described the November 14 meeting in which the executive allegedly told providers he might “shut the practice down” rather than continue to tolerate what he described as persistent…