Three white aides got 135 visits to one town. The Black aide who lived closer got 5, then was fired.

A Black certified nursing assistant in Michigan lived closer to Grand Blanc than her white co-workers did. In two months, her employer sent her there five times. It sent three white aides more than 135 times, the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission said. Within 48 hours of her complaining, she was fired.

Mid-Michigan Home Health & Hospice LLC has now agreed to pay her $41,137 and to work under a five-year federal consent decree, the EEOC announced Nov. 3. The case was EEOC v. Mid-Michigan Home Health & Hospice, No. 26-cv-10632, in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Michigan.

The EEOC says the company hired the aide in April 2023 and brought on a white aide a month later, who was given far more home visits. When the Black aide asked why, she was told the white employee could go places she could not, because Grand Blanc residents were “old-time” and “did not care for black people.” Those are the words the agency attributes to the company in its account of the case.

This is how bias often works in care work. Nobody has to say a slur to a worker’s face. A schedule does it. Patients voice a preference, a manager honors it, and the Black aide’s hours and pay shrink with no rule on paper.

“Customer preference is not a defense to race discrimination,” said Kenneth Bird, the EEOC’s regional attorney in Indianapolis. “Mid-Michigan’s decision not to assign the employee to home visits in Grand Blanc because she is black was illegal, as was their decision to fire her for complaining about it.”

The decree requires annual race discrimination training for all employees and annual reports to the EEOC on discrimination complaints and on where each aide is assigned. Of the $41,137, $1,137 covers lost wages and $40,000 is compensatory damages.

The sum is small. A woman lost her job for speaking up, and the company’s price is $40,000 in damages. The part with teeth is the reporting: for five years, someone outside the company will be able to check whether Black aides are still being kept off the routes that other aides get.

Every employer that takes a client’s request to “send someone else” and treats it as a scheduling matter should read Bird’s sentence twice. The law does not let a customer’s prejudice become a worker’s loss. The decree runs five years, and the assignment reports are due in every one of them.