Catholic Healthcare West pays $275,000 to resolve discrimination claim

October 21, 2010

Catholic Healthcare West, the parent company of French Hospital Medical Center in San Luis Obispo and Arroyo Grande Community Hospital, agreed to pay $275,000 in civil penalties to resolve allegations that CHW discriminated against immigrant job seekers, according to the U.S. Justice Department.

Under the terms of the settlement, CHW agreed to pay $257,000 in civil penalties — the largest amount of civil penalties ever paid to resolve such allegations — and $1,000 in back pay to the person who first mounted the allegations.

CHW required legal immigrants and naturalized U.S. citizen job seekers to provide more documentation than is required by federal law, but did not ask native born citizens to provide the same documentation, according to the department’s findings. The Immigration and Nationality Act prohibits employers from imposing different or greater employment-eligibility verification standards on the basis of a worker’s citizenship status.

CHW, the eighth largest hospital provider in the nation, has also agreed to review its past hiring practices at all of its 41 facilities in order to identify and compensate any additional victims who have lost wages as a result of the hospital provider’s discriminatory practices.