Tham Tai Mai filed the complaint with her lawyer, former Attorney General Pamela Brown, against her employer, the now-defunct Winners Corp.
The plaintiff is asking the U.S. District Court for the NMI to order her employer to pay her back pay from her last day of work to her date of re-employment plus liquidated damages; for compensatory damages to be proven at trial; for punitive damages; for other costs of suit and attorney’s fees.
In her complaint, Mai said she learned she was pregnant in Oct. 2006 and informed her line supervisor about it in the same month.
On Dec. 21, 2006, Winners Corp. owner/manager Ho Sik Min told her that her contract would not be renewed.
The plaintiff said she was terminated for her pregnancy and for her nationality on Feb. 20, 2007.
She said she was the second of four Vietnamese who were terminated by the defendant.
She also learned that the defendant renewed all the contracts of the non-Vietnamese workers and hired non-Vietnamese contract workers as well.
On March 21, 2007, the plaintiff filed a case with the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission.
On July 22, 2008, she received a notice of right to sue from the EEOC.
The plaintiff is suing her employer for intentional national origin discrimination and for intentional gender discrimination.
The plaintiff said the defendant’s unlawful discriminatory conduct was “willful, intentional and with malice or reckless disregard to the plaintiff’s federally protected rights.”
She said under the law, she is entitled to back pay from the date of her termination for the term of her employment contract, plus liquidated damages and other relief as the court deems proper.
The plaintiff also said that she was protected by the Pregnancy Discrimination Act.
