NIAGARA COUNTY
Pregnancy suit settled for $60,000
LOCKPORT — A female Niagara County Jail corrections officer, who said she was kicked out of the Corrections Officer Academy because she was pregnant, will collect $60,000 in a settlement approved Monday by a County Legislature committee.
Traci Haner, of Newfane, who is still working in the jail, had sued the county in U. S. District Court in April, charging gender discrimination in a matter dating to 2006.
Sheriff James C. Voutour, who took office Jan. 1, and County Attorney Claude A. Joerg said the settlement involved a confidentiality agreement and they couldn’t say much about the case. The full Legislature is expected to approve the deal next Tuesday.
“All the complaints were pre-Voutour,” said Joerg, who offered to brief the Legislature’s Administration Committee in a closed session, but none of the lawmakers present took him up on that offer.
However, court documents available online show that Haner, now 31, asserted that when she mentioned her pregnancy on a medical form she filled out when entering the academy in April 2006, she was dismissed from classes 10 days later.
Haner had been working as a part-time corrections officer since June 2004 and entered the academy to become eligible for a full-time job.
The lawsuit charges that although Haner offered to obtain a doctor’s release allowing her to take part in training at the academy, she was told her pregnancy “amounted to a ‘liability.’ ”
Yet, after she was booted from the academy, Haner’s lawsuit said she was ordered into a meeting with three higher-ups: Capts. Kevin Payne and Daniel Engert and Training Officer Steven Wook, and they assigned to her a full-time job that involved direct contact with inmates.
Haner pointed to a county policy that called for pregnant corrections officers to be placed on light duty work and have no contact with inmates. “Payne informed [Haner] that she was to accept a full-duty post where she would have direct inmate contact, or not work at all,” the suit says.
Haner said she needed the money, so she took the job but kept complaining to Maj. John Saxton, the jail’s commanding officer. After three complaints, Saxton finally assigned her to a light-duty desk job on July 9, 2006. She held that job for the duration of her pregnancy.
But Haner filed a complaint with the U. S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission in October 2006. She charged that the Sheriff’s Office retaliated against her by promoting a male officer ahead of her in May 2007, although Haner was ranked ahead of him on the full-time eligibility list.
She also complained she was taken off the overtime list at various times from May 2008 through January of this year, although a male officer who had a work-related injury stayed on that list.
The $60,000 settlement was reached Sept. 14 in a meeting with mediator Mary Helenbrook, court records show.
“I think it’s the most cost-effective settlement,” Joerg said, “considering what we’ve spent so far on litigation and what we’d have to pay her attorneys if we didn’t succeed.”
Joerg said the county spent $16,000 on the case with Buffalo’s Damon & Morey law firm. Haner was represented by Andrew P. Fleming of Hamburg.
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