A judge has ordered Stanford University and Stanford Health Care to pay $10 million in damages in connection with an employee’s racial harassment case, which included allegations that an employee dressed as a member of the Ku Klux Klan.
In March, an Alameda County Superior Court jury found that the two organizations had defamed patient testing technician Qiqiuia Young after she sued the healthcare provider for racial harassment.
Young’s lawsuit, filed in 2017, alleges coworkers used the N-word and assaulted Black patients. One image in the lawsuit depicts someone, who the lawsuit claims is a Stanford Health employee, dressing as a member of the Ku Klux Klan in what appears to be a patient examination room.
“I couldn’t close my eyes to what people were doing,” said Young, who is black. ‘I had to speak out. And when I did, they tried to silence me.”
The day after Young filed her lawsuit, Stanford Dean Lloyd Minor and Stanford Health Care CEO David Entwistle sent an email to 22,000 recipients implying that Young had been dishonest in her reports on racism and misconduct, according to a press release from Wednesday from her lawyers. In March, an Alameda County Superior Court jury ruled that the email had defamed Young.
“Racist actions, including the incident that occurred nearly a decade ago, have no place at Stanford Health Care,” the health care organization said in a statement Thursday. “These actions in no way reflect the organization and community we are today. We respectfully disagree with the jury’s verdict and will continue to pursue all legal remedies following the verdict.”
The jury initially awarded Young $20 million in damages, but Alameda County Superior Court Judge Karin Schwartz reduced Young’s award to $10 million on June 13.
“My client is a hero,” Lara Villarreal Hutner, Young’s attorney, said in the news release. “It’s been an almost decade-long battle between David and Goliath. And she won.’
