$11.25M settlement proposed for women paramedic candidates victimized by discriminatory CFD physical test

Chicago taxpayers will spend $11.25 million to compensate a dozen women who were hired as paramedics but then flunked out of the fire academy by a “discriminatory” test of physical agility “concocted” by instructors after a biased pre-hiring test was scrapped.

The post-hiring test was so demanding and so unrelated to the skills needed as a Chicago Fire Department paramedic that four of the 12 plaintiffs suffered “career-ending” hip and back injuries during the testing. One of the women literally “tore her hip open,” her attorney said.

“They were terrible tests. Constructor-concocted tests. Terribly dangerous,” said Marni Willenson, an attorney representing the impacted women.

“One test was an 18-inch box test. They took an 18-inch box — which is two times the height of a stair — and they had to have 25-pound dumbbells in each hand and step on and off the 18-inch box to the beat of a metronome at 112 beats a minute and do that for two minutes without losing cadence. There were multiple back injuries.”

Yet another test involved lifting a mannequin weighing at least 250 lbs. up and down six flights of stairs with a partner using what was described in the lawsuit as a “stair chair” that could not be allowed to touch “any surface except for the landing.”

The long-running lawsuit describes discrimination in the Chicago Fire Department as “stubborn and purposeful.”

“It reflects a deep-seated hostility within the CFD to allowing women to serve and the pervasive practice and custom of excluding women from the CFD uniformed ranks,” the final amended complaint, filed in January 2020, states.

“Unequal treatment and hostility to the presence of women in the uniformed ranks of the CFD are standard practice and custom within the CFD, and they are too pervasive to be unintended.”

The Chicago Fire Department's long, documented history of discrimination and racist incidents has triggered a parade of lawsuits, multimillion-dollar settlements, policy changes and back pay.

In 2013, Chicago spent nearly $2 million plus $1.7 million in legal fees to compensate dozens of women denied firefighter jobs because of a discriminatory test of upper body strength that City Hall has now scrapped.

Three years later, a dozen women accused the Chicago Fire Department of devising two new physical agility tests that were equally biased against women.

In 2014, a payroll auditor for CFD filed a federal lawsuit against the city armed with a finding of discrimination by the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission that upheld her sexual harassment charge against former Fire Commissioner John Brooks.

Four years later, five female paramedics filed a federal lawsuit accusing their superiors of sexual harassment and alleging the fire department "directly encourages" the illegal behavior by failing to "discipline, supervise and control" its officers."

Allegations of sexual discrimination also forced CFD to change its policy impacting pregnant employees and nursing mothers. Even with that history, quotes attributed to survey respondents were troubling.

One female employee complained, "Women are treated like garbage." Yet another respondent reported being forced to endure "racist photos and language at predominately white" firehouses.Also in the report: instances of men relieving themselves with the door open; sleeping arrangements where women were sent to undesirable areas of the firehouse; and a refusal to assist with equipment and moving victims.

Given that long and documented history, Willenson described the mediated, $11.25 million settlement as a relative bargain for the city.

Had the case gone to trial, the award surely would have topped $30 million, she said.

The original lawsuit was filed in October 2016.

Five of the women were ultimately rehired as paramedics by a department currently run by Chicago’s first female fire commissioner, Annette Nance Holt. They will receive settlement ranging from $200,000 to $400,000, plus retroactive seniority and pensions.

The other six who are unable to take the job will receive settlement ranging from $475,000 to $1.3 million. Attorney’s fees in the long-running case are pegged at $4.25 million.

“This is a good deal for the city. If this continued to trial, the city was facing massive exposure,” Willenson said.

In 2021, Chicago's now-former Inspector General Joe Ferguson shined a glaring spotlight on CFD, the white male bastion of city government, and demanded immediate changes in policy, training and employee protection.

The audit was accompanied by a survey in which more than one-fourth of respondents (73 of 285), both male and female, reported experiencing sexual harassment "at least once" at CFD.

Even more troubling was the rate of sexual harassment of women. Out of 45 female survey respondents, 28 62% reported being sexually harassed at CFD. The harassment included sexually suggestive remarks, open displays of sexually suggestive material, aggressive leering or staring.

One year later, a follow-up IG report concluded that a Chicago Fire Department that remained 91% male and 64% white had made some, but not all, of the changes needed to stop sexual and racial discrimination and protect employees who complain about it from retaliation.