Former ULAM employee files lawsuit against UMich Board of Regents, others for wrongful termination

Last May, Erika Ventura, former animal husbandry technician at Michigan Medicine’s Unit for Laboratory Animal Medicine, was terminated from her position. Now, after a year of fighting against the decision, Ventura is suing the University of Michigan Board of Regents, and two of her former managers, Julie Whitbeck and Carrie Childs-Thor, for wrongful termination violating Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and Michigan’s Elliott-Larsen civil rights act.

In a copy of the lawsuit obtained by The Michigan Daily, Ventura’s lawyer Noah Hurwitz, principal attorney for Hurwitz Law, alleges that Ventura was wrongfully terminated from her position at ULAM due to her discussion of LGBTQ+ issues while at work, which led to discriminatory firing practices by her management.

At the May Board of Regents meeting last year, Ventura and her former coworkers raised concerns regarding Ventura’s termination and the conduct of their manager Julie Whitbeck, the assistant manager of husbandry services at ULAM. In an interview with The Daily, Ventura said the way her termination was handled was upsetting, which led her to look for various methods to fight the decision before eventually filing a lawsuit against the University. 

“I started filing a grievance through the (Equal Employment Opportunity Commission),” Ventura said. “I definitely was going to fight this. With everything that’s happened, there’s no way I wasn’t going to fight this.”

In an interview with The Daily, Hurwitz said he believed Ventura’s discussion of LGBTQ+ issues in the workplace fell under the umbrella of protected activity, and her managers could not retaliate against her for expressing her views and concerns about the hostile workplace environment at ULAM.

“To us, this termination did not stem from performance issues,” Hurwitz said. “It really stems from her conduct that we felt constituted what we call protected activity –– activity that you can engage in at work, that you can engage in as a public employee, in order to speak your mind and defend your rights.”

The lawsuit also included social media posts by Whitbeck. In the posts, Whitbeck expressed opposition to transgender athletes participating in women’s sports, LGBTQ+ representation in the media and education on gender and sexuality in schools. Whitbeck also previously updated her profile picture to include a filter reading “law enforcement lives matter” and shared a post directing racially insensitive comments and imagery at former U.S. Rep. Krystle Matthews, D-S.C. 

Hurwitz said he believed Whitbeck’s biases portrayed in the posts influenced the decision to terminate Ventura.

“We found (Whitbeck’s posts) to be objectively not in line with the University’s values,” Hurwitz said. “This is a person who ultimately we believe the facts are going to show was very much involved in the decision to terminate (Ventura).”

Hurwitz said the University’s goal to protect employees’ right to free speech could not come above their responsibility to protect other employees from discrimination.

“The issue is not about them protecting her free speech,” Hurwitz said. “The issue is about making sure that somebody doesn’t take their outside values and outside beliefs and use them to inflict a decision on somebody that we think is unlawful.”

Whitbeck is no longer listed in ULAM’s staff directory.

Additionally, the lawsuit mentions that Ventura was designated as an employee who cannot be rehired by any part of the  University following her termination, according to the University’s “no rehire” policy. This distinction was upheld after Ventura’s attempts to appeal her termination were denied. Due to the University’s role as such a large employer in the state, Hurwitz expressed his concern with the policy and its potential outcomes for employees.

“We think a termination from (the University) sort of means more even than a termination from somewhere else,” Hurwitz said. “You’re losing not only your job, but the key opportunity when you’re in a field like (Ventura’s), which is a limited field, to one of the only employers really that can have you perform the type of job duties that she wants to perform.”

Ventura said one of the reasons she is fighting her termination is to bring awareness to the issues she experienced during her time employed at the University.

“I have never worked in a place more racist, transphobic, homophobic, than the University of Michigan,” Ventura said. “My hope is to make sure everyone sees that so they can fix it, because this is how we’re going to fix it.”

Julie Whitbeck and Carrie Childs-Thor did not respond to requests for comment in time for publication.

A spokesperson for Michigan Medicine declined to comment, citing pending litigation. 

Summer Managing Editor Mary Corey can be reached at mcorey@umich.edu.

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