By Harold Kruger
Appeal-Democrat
MARYSVILLE, Calif. — A corrections officer has sued Colusa County, alleging the Sheriff’s Department failed to reasonably accommodate her pregnancy.
Vanessa Guizar filed her case earlier this month in Colusa County Superior Court. She seeks unspecified damages.
“The county did not discriminate against Ms. Guizar and has always treated her in compliance with the law,” County Counsel Marcos Kropf said in an email. “Ms. Guizar voluntarily resigned her position with the county for her own personal reasons. Accordingly, we will vigorously defend this case.”
Guizar’s attorney, Stephan Wattenberg, said, “We don’t generally comment on ongoing litigation.”
According to the suit, Guizar, employed as a corrections officer since September 2011, learned she was pregnant in July 2014.
Two months later, her doctor gave her a note “with a restriction that she could not come into direct contact with inmates for the duration of her pregnancy,” the suit said.
On Sept. 15, 2014, Guizar was told “no accommodation could be made for her restrictions despite the fact that there was one or more positions available that (she) could perform within her restrictions,” the suit said.
In her separate complaint to the state Department of Fair Employment and Housing, Guizar said a part-time front-desk position was available in the Sheriff’s Department, “but her supervisors did not place her in this position because they would have had to offer another employee (who was on worker’s compensation) first, and the supervisors did not want the other employee working in the office.”
Guizar was unable to work from Sept. 19, 2014, to May 1 and “was forced to utilize all of her accumulated sick and vacation time and lost wages for approximately six to seven months,” the suit said.
Guizar has not returned to work, the suit alleged, because of the “stress and aggravation of having been denied pregnancy and/or disability leave.”
The baby was born on March 23.