The federal court has placed under advisement a race discrimination lawsuit filed against Imperial Pacific International (CNMI) LLC by IPI\u2019s former employee.<\/p>\n
After a motion hearing Wednesday afternoon in Joshua Gray\u2019s lawsuit, U.S. District Court for the NMI Chief Judge Ramona V. Manglona said a written decision would be forthcoming.<\/p>\n
William Fitzgerald argued as counsel for Gray. Kelley Butcher argued in support of IPI\u2019s motion to dismiss the case.<\/p>\n
Gray, who is an African American, is suing IPI for alleged wrongful termination in violation of public policy (immigration violations), race discrimination, wrongful failure to hire, and infliction of emotional distress.<\/p>\n
IPI has denied the allegations. <\/p>\n
Butcher argued that Gray merely asserts a broad violation of \u201cimmigration laws,\u201d yet fails to tie his complaint to an established CNMI or federal law. Without citing a specific statute upon which Gray can base his claim, his claim must be dismissed, Butcher said.<\/p>\n
Also, since Gray failed to file a charge within 180 days of the act of discrimination, his claims fail and this claim must be dismissed, Butcher said.<\/p>\n
She said the intentional infliction of emotional distress claim must be dismissed as a matter of law and should be barred by the exclusivity provisions of the CNMI Workman\u2019s Compensation Act.<\/p>\n
In Gray\u2019s opposition to the motion to dismiss, Fitzgerald said IPI has failed to make a case that plaintiff\u2019s action should be dismissed at this stage of the proceedings.<\/p>\n
Fitzgerald said Gray has alleged sufficient facts to make a plausible claim that IPI terminated him because of his warnings and complaints to them about their violations of immigration laws and that they had a policy to discriminate against non-Asian employees, which was directed at him and resulted in his termination and replacement by an Asian woman.<\/p>\n
Fitzgerald said the motion to dismiss the intentional infliction of emotional distress claim should be denied on the grounds that it is a question of fact whether racial discrimination suffered by Gray rises to the level of outrageous conduct.<\/p>\n
Fitzgerald asserted that it is beyond dispute that intentional infliction of emotional distress is not subject to the CNMI Workers\u2019 Compensation law.<\/p>\n
According to the complaint, Gray was allegedly informed in March and April 2018 that his job responsibilities would be changed to assist with a \u201cfloating hotel.\u201d<\/p>\n
The \u201cfloating hotel\u201d was allegedly IPI\u2019s project that never materialized. Gray complained to IPI\u2019s legal counsel that this assignment was a demotion\u2014a complaint that was allegedly ignored.<\/p>\n
In January 2019, a senior executive of IPI allegedly told Gray that he was instructed to fire him, but he (senior executive) refused to do so.<\/p>\n
The owner of IPI allegedly then informed this senior executive that he wanted Gray fired and that a Chinese woman, Lucy Guo, a non-U.S. citizen, would handle the hotel operations.<\/p>\n
Fitzgerald said IPI terminated Gray\u2019s employment on Jan. 24, 2019. The termination, Fitzgerald said, was clearly in retaliation.<\/p>\n
In late 2017, Gray allegedly complained to IPI that the company was violating immigration law and CNMI public policy by failing to hire qualified U.S. and local applicants. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The federal court has placed under advisement a race discrimination lawsuit filed against Imperial Pacific…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":23,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[26,12497,23645,259],"class_list":["post-307937","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-local-news","tag-cnmi","tag-ipi","tag-joshua-gray","tag-lawsuit"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/307937","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/23"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=307937"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/307937\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=307937"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=307937"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=307937"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}