Texas Petrochemical Contractor to Pay $135K in Disability Discrimination Suit Settlement

A Texas petrochemical services company that fired three brothers because of a blood disorder that they shared will pay $135,000 to settle a lawsuit filed by federal officials.

Signature Industrial Services LLC (SIS) in Beaumont also must provide other relief to settle the disability discrimination lawsuit brought by the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC).

In the suit, the EEOC charged that the company had violated federal law by firing the brothers because of a blood disorder that runs in their family.

The EEOC said Drew West and Anthony West had been working at the Exxon/Mobil refinery in Beaumont when SIS took over a contract to perform mechanical services at the plant. A third West brother, Raymond, began working there around January 2013. All of them have Hemophilia A, a blood disorder that does not impede their performing their jobs, but which requires expensive medicine for treatment should they sustain an on-the-job scrape or injury that causes bleeding.

EEOC’s suit said SIS’s top management instructed lower-level managers to fire the Wests once they learned how SIS’s insurance costs could spike by having them on the payroll. Because the West brothers had an excellent work history, the project manager initially refused to fire them, but after he stopped working at the plant, the West brothers’ direct supervisor was ordered to fire them. On July 3, 2013, the brothers were advised they were being laid off. SIS claimed the layoffs were due to a “reduction in force,” but no workers were laid off at that time.

The EEOC filed suit in U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Texas, Beaumont Division (EEOC v. Signature Industrial Services, LLC Civil Action No. 1:18cv70) after first attempting to reach a pre-litigation settlement through its conciliation process.

Topics Lawsuits Texas Contractors