FEDERAL JUDGE CERTIFIES CLASS IN DCF SPECIAL RISK DISCRIMINATION SUIT

U.S. District Judge Stephan Mickle has certified class-action status for 842 forensic workers in several different forensic units including Florida State Hospital in Chattahoochee, South Florida Evaluation and Treatment Center in Miami and North Florida Evaluation and Treatment Center in Gainesville.

“When I started working at Florida State Hospital in 1974, I took on discrimination in special risk retirement and have pursued it to the present day,” said AFSCME Council 79 President Jeanette D. Wynn, who worked for nearly 30 years in the forensic unit at Florida State Hospital. “The day of justice soon will arrive for nonprofessional minority workers who have watched their white counterparts unfairly receive extra benefits for the same work.”

In October 2001, forensic workers at Florida State Hospital and officials of AFSCME Florida filed federal discrimination lawsuits filed in U.S. District Court in Tallahassee on behalf of nonprofessional employees at state hospitals and prisons. The discrimination lawsuit was filed because the nurses, dieticians and pharmacists who received a special risk retirement benefit are 77 percent white, but the forensic workers who were denied it are 77 percent black.

“We believe this important ruling indicates that the Court is sympathetic to these workers,” said Ben Patterson, a Tallahassee attorney who is handling the litigation. “None of the facts are in dispute. It is purely a matter of law.”

The workers filing suit care for people who have been found mentally incompetent to stand trial, who have been found not guilty by reason of insanity or whose mental competence is being evaluated prior to trial.

One of the plaintiffs, Kelvin Haywood, a Unit Treatment and Rehabilitation Specialist-Forensic at Florida State Hospital in Chattahoochee, attended a press conference in Tallahassee:

“I feel that we have been discriminated against because of the work conditions,” Haywood said. “We more or less protect the professional staff who receive special risk retirement. We (the nonprofessional employees) are direct care with constant physical contact with the residents throughout our workday, but the professionals have little or no contact with the patients. We are security for the nurses and psychologists, many of whom refuse to come on the ward without us being there.”

Adding insult to injury, the Legislature in 1999 granted special risk retirement to health professionals — nurses, dieticians, pharmacists — working for the Florida Department of Children and Families in four state mental hospitals (two in Chattahoochee, one in Gainesville and one in Miami).

However, the Legislature did not grant special risk status to other forensic professional and nonprofessional employees — human services workers, psychiatric aides, rehabilitation specialists — in the same units caring for the criminally insane. These workers are the ones who face injury everyday because of their hands-on work with the sometimes-violent patients.

“The priority should have been given to those workers who maintain custody and control of the mental patients,” said President Wynn, the elected state president of the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees. “The workers in physical contact with the patients are equivalent to correctional officers in a prison.”

Read Judge Mickle's order
Read AFSCME's motion for class-action status
Read Tallahassee Democrat article on ruling

Federal judge rules class action lawsuit
on racial discrimination in special risk
retirement may proceed

Aug. 28, 2002 — U.S. District Judge Stephan Mickle issued a decision on Wednesday against the state of Florida's attempts to throw out a class-action racial-discrimination lawsuit addressing disparate impacts among professional white and nonprofessional minority workers at the state's four forensic mental health units.

"When I started working at Florida State Hospital in 1974, I took on discrimination in special risk retirement and have pursued it to the present day," said AFSCME Council 79 President Jeanette D. Wynn, who worked for nearly 30 years in the forensic unit at Florida State Hospital. "The day of justice soon will arrive for nonprofessional minority workers who have watched their white counterparts unfairly receive extra benefits for the same work."

In October 2001, forensic workers at Florida State Hospital and officials of AFSCME Florida filed a pair of federal discrimination lawsuits filed in U.S. District Court in Tallahassee on behalf of 922 nonprofessional employees at state hospitals and prisons.

The lawsuits were desperately needed because in 1999 the Legislature granted special risk to 923 health professionals - nurses, dieticians, pharmacists - working for the Florida Department of Children and Families in four state mental hospitals (two in Chattahoochee, one in Gainesville and one in Miami) that care for the criminally insane: people who have been found mentally incompetent to stand trial or who have been found not guilty by reason of insanity.

However, the Legislature did not grant special risk status to 922 nonprofessional employees - human services workers, psychiatric aides, rehabilitation specialists - in the same units caring for the criminally insane. These nonprofessional employees are the ones who face injury everyday because of their hands-on work with the sometimes-violent patients.

"The priority should have been given to those workers who maintain custody and control of the mental patients," said Jeanette Wynn, the elected state president of the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees. "The workers in physical contact with the patients are equivalent to correctional officers in a prison."

The discrimination lawsuit was filed because the nurses, dieticians and pharmacists who received the benefit are 77 percent white, but the nonprofessionals who were denied it are 77 percent black.