A black woman worked for the gym Equinox. The company fires her, says she was late 47 times in 10 months. She says she was fired for being black. A jury just awarded her $11.25 million.

A black woman worked for the gym Equinox.

The company fires her, says she was late 47 times in 10 months. She says she was fired for being black.

A jury just awarded her $11.25 million. https://t.co/uN6iCIcilo pic.twitter.com/XcGWh39PyD

— Richard Hanania (@RichardHanania) May 26, 2023

According to the NY Times:

Ms. Europe’s tenure at the club was short-lived; Equinox terminated her employment in less than a year because, the company said, she was late 47 times in the course of 10 months. Ms. Europe held a different view of her firing, believing that her lateness was merely a pretext for discrimination, and soon after she filed a lawsuit in Manhattan federal court, arguing that she had been subjected to a hostile work environment and eventually let go because of her race and gender. Last week, a predominantly white jury of five women and three men agreed, delivering a verdict in little over an hour. The next day they awarded her $11.25 million in damages.

The swiftness of the jury’s decision and the size of the payout — $10 million in punitive damages and $1.25 million for the distress she suffered — follow a pattern similar to the verdict reached in the same courthouse just a few weeks before, in E. Jean Carroll’s defamation suit against Donald J. Trump. In both instances, the process and outcome suggest the ways in which recent transformative social movements around race and gender might reframe the way that juries think about the long shadow of emotional disruption that bigotry or sexual violence can produce.

If you own a business in New York City, sell it immediately. If you live there and you value common sense, leave there as quickly as possible. The city is lost.