Alisha Coleman v. Bobby Dodd Institute

The American Civil Liberties Union, the ACLU of Georgia and co-counsel Buckley Beal LLP filed a brief in the Eleventh Circuit Court of Appeals arguing that their client, Alisha Coleman, was subjected to unlawful workplace discrimination when she was fired for experiencing a heavy period, a symptom of pre-menopause.

Coleman was employed as a 911 call taker for the Bobby Dodd Institute, a job training and employment agency in Fort Benning, Georgia where she had worked for nearly a decade, when she was fired in 2016 for experiencing two incidents of sudden onset, heavy menstrual flow.

Title VII of the Civil Rights Act prohibits workplace discrimination on the basis of sex, including “pregnancy, childbirth, and related medical conditions.” The brief argues that the district court, which dismissed the case in February, erred in ruling that premenopause and the associated sudden-onset heavy menstruation are not protected under Title VII.