OKC to settle claims that it unlawfully fired employee

Staff Writer kschlotthauer @oklahoman.com

Oklahoma City has agreed to pay $135,000 to the estate of a former city attorney who claimed she was unlawfully fired because of her age and disability.

Helen Gigger, then 72, filed a job discrimination lawsuit last year in Oklahoma City federal court. She claimed the city fired her in 2016 and replaced her with younger employees.

Gigger died Jan. 4 at 73, but her husband, Nathan Gigger, 76, continued the case. The Oklahoma City council approved the settlement this month but the city did not admit liability.

Helen Gigger had worked for the city for 37 years. She started as an assistant municipal counselor in 1979, but 12 years and two promotions later, she was diagnosed with diabetes.

At the time, “the diagnosis did not impact her work, job performance, or work schedule,” according to the lawsuit, but in 2013, she suffered kidney failure and began having kidney dialysis treatments three times a week, with each treatment lasting about four hours.

Municipal Counselor Kenneth Jordan told Gigger the time spent at her treatments would be considered work time, according to the lawsuit, and Gigger viewed the decision as “a reasonable accommodation.”

Three years later, Jordan issued a memo regarding a Reduction in Force (RIF) Plan.

Gigger asked Jordan whether she was being “riffed,” and he said, “Yes, but nothing is final. … All this has happened before and nothing is concrete,” according to the lawsuit.

In March 2016, Gigger received paperwork indicating she had been “cut from the budget.”

Gigger began speaking of her layoff as disparate treatment and received an email from Jordan the next month which stated, “I regret to inform you that your position is one that has been identified for elimination. … Your employment with the city will terminate as of 12:00 a.m. on July 1, 2016.”

The lawsuit claimed Jordan’s notice of elimination violated the RIF Plan because Gigger’s position was not eliminated, but “retained by numerous Municipal Counselor IIIs, who unlike Mrs. Gigger, were younger, not disabled, and had not previously complained about discriminatory animus and disparate treatment.”

In June 2016, the city gave Gigger a week to consider taking a position as a legal secretary if she could pass a typing test, a suggestion which Gigger described as “humiliating, disrespectful, and yet another display of animus.”

Gigger was the oldest full-time assistant municipal counselor working in the office and had the most experience of anyone in the office, the lawsuit states, and she was the only lawyer with a disability whose position was eliminated because of the RIF Plan.

Gigger’s attorney, Melvin Hall, and the city’s attorney, Margaret McMorrow-Love, did not immediately return phone messages.