Fired Nurse Argues Her Alcoholism Is a Disability

Is alcoholism a disability? And did a surgery center fire a nurse over her alcoholism or her absenteeism? We should know the answers to those 2 questions now that a federal judge has ruled to let a nurse's wrongful termination lawsuit against a New Jersey ASC proceed.

Allison Skidmore, RN, says her alcoholism is a disability. She says that comments her supervisors at Summit Surgical Center in Voorhees, N.J., made during her termination meeting made it clear that it is the primary reason she was fired. This, she says, violates the New Jersey Law Against Discrimination (NJLAD).

Virtua Health, the surgery center's parent company, requested that the court issue a summary judgment on the case, arguing that Ms. Skidmore had failed to support her claim that she was fired due to alcoholism, not absenteeism.

The judge, however, left that decision to a trial. "Plaintiff has presented evidence, if believed by a jury, that demonstrates that defendant terminated plaintiff's employment because of her alcoholism," it wrote in a June 21 ruling.

Ms. Skidmore, a Virtua Health employee for more than 30 years, began at Summit in 2003. According to the court ruling, she was a skilled and well-liked nurse, but beset by alcoholism, anxiety, depression and a volatile marriage, and had accumulated a series of written warnings on her attendance and the mishandling of medications and specimens.

In December 2009 she called out citing anxiety, and did not arrive for her shift despite her short-staffed superior's pleas. The supervisor, consulting with human resources over Ms. Skidmore's 6 call-outs and 31 late arrivals, concluded that termination was the next step in the discipline process.

In her lawsuit, Ms. Skidmore alleges that during her termination meeting (which court records characterize as "very emotional"), her supervisors told her that she wouldn't have been fired if she'd sought treatment through Virtua's employee substance abuse assistance program. She also cites other examples that she believes show her alcoholism was more of a deciding factor in the firing than her attendance, such as expressed concerns and spot-testing.

"The fact that plaintiff suffers from a disability does not prevent her employer from terminating her for other reasons," says the court's ruling, "and the NJLAD allows the employer freedom to reject those employees 'who are unable to do the job, whether because they are generally unqualified or because they have a handicap that in fact impedes job performance.'" That distinction may now be up to a jury.

Attorneys for Ms. Skidmore and Virtua Health did not immediately return calls seeking comment.

David Bernard