Two former behavioral health clinicians say Central Peninsula Hospital failed to act after they reported racial discrimination by their bosses. The lawsuit is being argued in federal court and alleges, among other things, race-based discrimination, retaliation, breach of contract and intentional infliction of emotional distress.
The first time Cautrese Alexander visited Alaska, it was on a seven-day cruise. Like a lot of people who visit the Last Frontier, she fell in love with the state on vacation. Then she started looking for ways to relocate.
Her decades of experience working in the mental health field led her to Central Peninsula Hospital. Alexander says the hospital was proactive about hiring her – flying her to Soldotna, letting her tour hospital facilities and introducing her to staff.
“When they offered me the position, I signed a two-year contract and relocated from Florida,” Alexander said. “I left my home there with my two cats for a long-term commitment.”
As a crisis care clinician, Alexander worked with patients experiencing emergent mental health crises. That’s where she met Shaira Shah, a traveling social worker who was also hired in the hospital’s Behavioral Health Department. Like Alexander, Shah says there’s fulfillment in helping people positively change their lives.
“Being able to help someone get past a mental illness or a mental situation or a behavioral health problem to help them live the life that they want to live, that’s the life that they envision for themselves,” Shah said. “Being able to help do that, that makes me happy.”
Both say their positions were everything they wanted. Until the hospital promoted a new department head this year.
Shah and Alexander say the new boss spoke down to and about them, changed their job scope and reassigned their patients. They say that didn’t happen to any of their other coworkers.
Shah says the new director took away her office and told another employee she couldn’t wait to “shoot the gun to fire” Shah. In February, Shah says her boss scheduled her as the only clinician for eight consecutive days of 14-hour shifts. And Shah says her boss put her on a performance improvement plan after Shah allegedly CC’d someone inappropriately on a group email.
“There was this anxiety going into work, didn't know what we were going to meet up with, didn't know what kind of behavior we're going to get, didn't know how we were going to be spoken to,” Shah said. “It was just the direct opposite of how things were before, and I had been there a year and a half, perfectly happy.”
Alexander says her boss assigned her menial work that had previously been shared by all staff, and required Alexander to work an extra hour in an office, even if other staff had left.
“The rules were only for me,” Alexander said.
And then there were the day-to-day interactions. Alexander, Shah say their boat addressed them hostilely in meetings while being pleasant to white staff. The lawsuit says the two white employees described the behavior toward Alexander and Shah as “awful.” Another coworker contacted the hospital’s human resources department anonymously to report that Shah and Alexander’s bosses spoke to them with a harsher tone, attitude and demeanor than white staff, the lawsuit says.
Both Alexander and Shah say they ultimately sought medical treatment for things like emotional distress, anxiety, nausea, high blood pressure and insomnia. They say those symptoms were a direct result of how they were treated at work.
Shah says she suspected she and Alexander were being treated differently by the new department head, and by the supervisor of the department’s Psychiatric Emergency Services team, because they were the only two Black people working in the hospital’s Behavioral Health Department. But Shah says she was reluctant to voice those suspicions out loud.
“Those are hard words to use,” Shah.” That's a very serious accusation. But the mere fact that it is that kind of a serious accusation, in my mind, don't you think even more you would go, ‘Let me just step into this and stop it, and let's see what's really going on here?’ And that never happened.”
Central Peninsula Hospital Director of Government Affairs and Marketing Bruce Richards told KDLL the hospital cannot comment on pending litigation and declined to answer specific questions about the lawsuit. He said the hospital “remains committed to providing a safe, respectful and equitable workplace for all employees.”
Alexander and Shah say multiple efforts to seek intervention from the hospital’s human resources department went almost entirely unanswered. The lawsuit describes six instances between Jan. 1 and March 2 where someone flagged racist behavior to HR, including by Alexander and Shah individually, together and twice by their white coworkers.
The lawsuit says HR dismissed the behavior as miscommunication, complained about the detailed documentation Alexander and Shah provided with their reports and declined to interview some witnesses. In some instances, Alexander and Shah say HR didn’t follow up at all on reports.
The lawsuit says HR failed to act effectively in response to the reports and did not place either boss on administrative leave, despite the reports and corroboration from other white coworkers.
Alexander and Shah say a combination of the racist behavior and HR’s unwillingness to intervene are what led them to resign in early March. Shah says the hospital asked her to leave her position immediately even though she gave a two-week notice.
“How could we both spend our lives making a choice to professionally step in and help people, to professionally step in and defend them and protect them for whatever the situation is – How could we say that's what we're doing in our lives, and we can't do it for ourselves?” Shah said.
Alexander says leaving Central Peninsula Hospital didn’t come with any sense of relief.
“I was devastated,” Alexander said. “I love the Soldotna area. I loved the PES job. It felt like home to me. So it didn't – I didn't feel relief. I felt devastation for me. I felt sadness.”
After leaving the hospital. Shah says she floated pursuing legal action to Alexander, who agreed to participate. That’s how they ended up working with the Anchorage-based Yuraq Legal Services, which is representing them.
Through the lawsuit, Alexander and Shah are seeking multiple things.
First, the lawsuit asks for a formal declaration that the hospital violated the Alaska Human Rights Act and Title VII of the federal Civil Rights Act of 1964. Among other things, the landmark federal legislation outlawed racial segregation in public accommodations and public schools. Title VII of the act prohibits employment discrimination on the basis of race, sex, national origin or religion.
Title VII also created the federal Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. Alexander and Shah filed discrimination charges with the commission detailing what they experienced at Central Peninsula Hospital. According to the lawsuit, the commission notified Alexander and Shah in April that it received their requests and forwarded those requests to the U.S. Department of Justice.
Alexander and Shah also seek back pay, past and future lost wages, lost benefits, housing losses and other economic damages. That’s on top of compensatory damages for things like reputational harm, emotional distress and medical expenses associated with the physical symptoms they say they experienced.
Alexander and Shah also want the hospital to remove, correct, redact or otherwise retract false or discriminatory employment records. Finally, the suit seeks punitive damages and attorney’s fees.
But Alexander says Central Peninsula Hospital can go even further.
“Justice for me is revamping their policies and procedures,” she said. “That all people are treated fairly, regardless of the color of our skin, and that they actually take allegations serious and they do something about it.”
Shah agrees.
“Protect your employee, protect that person that is happy doing their job, that wants to do their job, and when they're placed in a situation where it's a hostile work environment,” Shah said.
Shah and Alexander initially filed their case in state court in June. The hospital moved the case to federal court a month later because the lawsuit alleges a violation of federal law. The hospital has around two more weeks to respond to the lawsuit.
It’s been about six months since Shah and Alexander resigned.
Today, Alexander and her two cats live in Anchorage. She doesn’t want to share where she’s working now.
Shah is still on the peninsula. After working with patients in Soldotna for two years, she says there’s a clear demand for care. So she’s looking into opening her own trauma therapy practice.
