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Private activities outside of work causes employee to be fired

Most San Diego residents might assume that what they do outside of work should not affect their employment or the perceived ability to do their jobs.

What a person does outside his or her job while off the clock is supposed to be private, or rather none of their boss’s business. That train of thought, however, got a young journalist fired and the woman has now filed a gender discrimination lawsuit against her former employer.

The journalist covered high society happenings, general assignments, fashion and human interest stories for a newspaper. The 30-year-old woman was employed full-time by the newspaper, but she would occasionally strip. When her boss found out she was dancing part-time, the company fired her.

The woman has filed a complaint with the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, accusing her ex-employer of gender discrimination. According to the woman, she used exotic dancing as a source of income to pay for college and her master’s degree. She continued to strip on the side after getting a full-time job in order to exercise since she didn’t have a gym membership.

According to the woman’s attorney, the journalist did not break any laws by dancing. Additionally, she only danced part-time so that it would not interfere with her ability to do her full-time job. The woman’s lawsuit argues that because exotic dancing is mostly a woman’s profession, being fired for dancing or because of one’s past employment as a stripper would have an adverse impact on all women in the workplace. Gender discrimination violations fall under federal employment laws.

When the woman was fired, the editor of the newspaper she worked for said that the woman did not accurately fill out her work experience on her job application because she did not list her work as a stripper. The woman maintains that she provided honest answers on her job application.

Source: CNN, “Reporter, fired for stripping, charges gender discrimination,” Alan Duke, May 11, 2012

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