Gay Man Sues Boss For Pro-Gay Bias
A gay man in Manhattan contends he was fired because he objected to his boss’s biased hiring: The boss, he alleges, had a bias against hiring straight people.
Jamie Ardigo, 32, of Hoboken, is suing investor and entrepreneur J. Christopher Burch of New York for sex-discrimination and wrongful termination. Ardigo, who had been hired as HR director for J. Christopher Capital, Burch’s company, contends he was fired when he sought to change what he claims was Burch’s and the company’s discriminatory practices.
Ardigo tells ABC News that when he went to work for the company in early November 2011 he had no idea he was signing on with a biased outfit. “Did I have any inkling what I was getting into? No, I did not. I went there with the expectation that, as I’d been told, there was a family environment where employees and managers supported one another, and there was an open-door policy.”
Things went downhill quickly, he claims in his suit.
Less than four weeks later, he says, he was seated in a meeting where Burch announced the fact that he hired only gay men because they were productive, and because he trusted them. Burch said the same thing, Ardigo asserts, on other occasions: “I witnessed it in meetings with the executive management team, where he’d blatantly state the fact that he only likes to hire gay men and beautiful women.” Read More
