Finally!

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Amarillo Globe News
Trial set in Texas Tech discrimination suit

Two former pharmacy professors get day in court after almost six years

By Michael Smith
[e-mail]
Publication Date: 04/03/06
Two former pharmacy professors who filed a discrimination suit against the Texas Tech University Health Sciences Center almost six years ago will get their day in federal court Tuesday.
Elaine King Miller and Lucinda G. Miller, no relation, claim they were passed over for tenure at the school based on their gender and were retaliated against for complaining about male-female salary inequities, court documents show.
King Miller claims a "hostile work environment" that made work "intolerable" forced her to resign in March 1999, court documents state.
Miller also alleges that after she was diagnosed as legally blind in 1999, school dean Arthur Nelson refused to arrange for adaptive equipment so she could continue working.
King Miller was demoted from her associate dean post in 2000 and terminated in 2001, according to court records.
Tech claims tenure was denied based on "insufficient documentation or demonstration of competence and excellence," court records show.
Tech defends its termination of King Miller, citing board of regents' policy that calls for a one-year terminal contract after a professor's second tenure application is denied.
The professors filed suit against TTUHSC in November 2000.
U.S. District Judge Mary Lou Robinson ruled in February 2002 that the two women could sue for discrimination.
In 2003, Texas Tech and then Texas Attorney General John Cornyn appealed Robinson's decision to the U.S. 5th Circuit Court of Appeals in New Orleans and won, with the school arguing it had state sovereign immunity from the suit.
The circuit court reviewed the case again last year, overturning the 2003 decision and rejecting Tech's argument, citing that the school's receipt of federal funds waives state immunity.
The trial is scheduled to begin in Robinson's court at 9 a.m. Tuesday.

[Lithos]

1. Interesting

Please keep us updated if you can.

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2. I will. Elaine King-Miller has come to Midland to talk to our

Democratic crowd in 2004. It is where I met her a few years ago. She was running for County Commissioner in Lubbock and at the time (she lost) I had no idea of this suit until she e-mailed me this information.