A nurse who worked at a Denver hospital is filing a lawsuit against her former employer claiming that she was fired for discussing her support for President Trump.
Lizzy Mathews, a 27-year employee of Denver Health Medical Center, filed the January 11 lawsuit in U.S. District Court for the District of Colorado in Denver against hospital nursing manager Kelly Torres and acute nursing director Marc Fedo, Fox News reported.
The lawsuit alleged that Mathews be reinstated with back pay and receive punitive damages for emotional trauma after the hospital reportedly terminated her employment for having a political conversation with a patient.
Mathews, 65, was checking in on a patient on September 10, 2016—less than two months before the general election—when her patient, watching election coverage on television, asked her opinion on who would win the 2016 election, the Denver Post reported.
The nurse replied that she hoped Trump would win and was “praying for him.”
Three days later, Mathews said she received a phone call from the nursing manager informing her that the patient, a former high-ranking employee at the hospital, lodged a complaint.
The manager told her she was fired and not eligible to be rehired at the hospital, the lawsuit claims.
The hospital reportedly claimed that Mathews had been fired for multiple reasons, including that she did not put in enough hours at her job.
The lawsuit states that Mathews’ firing “was motivated by Mrs. Mathews’ exercise of constitutionally protected conduct of association with her political views” and that the hospital did not fire any other employees for having political conversations at the hospital.
The suit also states that the hospital committed an act of racial discrimination by firing Mathews because she is Indian-American and went to a nursing school in India.
Denver Health released a statement saying that while the hospital cannot comment on pending litigation, it does not discriminate against employees on the basis of race or ethnicity.