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University of Phoenix Favors Mormons, EEOC Says
PHOENIX (By Dawn Gilbertson, Arizona Republic)
September 28, 2006 The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission has sued
the University of Phoenix, alleging religious discrimination against
non-Mormon enrollment counselors.
The federal lawsuit, announced a day after the country's largest private university signed on as the naming sponsor of Cardinals Stadium, says the company treated employees who were not members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints less favorably when it came to sharing recruiting leads on new students, tuition waivers and reprimands. The school, owned by publicly traded Apollo Group Inc., has 4,400 enrollment counselors, including 2,600 in Phoenix. "We have found a pattern of practice at this very large company of preferring LDS workers over non-LDS workers," said Mary Jo O'Neill, regional attorney for the watchdog agency. It filed the lawsuit Monday in U.S. District Court in Phoenix. Apollo spokesman Joe Cockrell said the company hasn't seen the lawsuit, but he emphasized in a statement that the 15,000-employee company has "always been guided by equal opportunity and respect for others." "We maintain a strict anti-discrimination and anti-harassment policy and take a zero-tolerance stance on these issues," the statement said. The University of Phoenix and Apollo have been dogged by murmurs of Mormon influence for years. Apollo's longtime president and chief executive officer, Todd Nelson, was active in the church. He left the company unexpectedly in January. New president Brian Mueller is not Mormon, nor is Apollo founder and Chairman John Sperling. O'Neill said the UOP case reflects a broader trend the agency is seeing of "intolerance in the workplace for people of other religions." Last year, the agency settled a case alleging discrimination against non-Mormon employees at Desert Schools Federal Credit Union and another alleging discrimination against a Mormon supervisor at the Fairmont Scottsdale Princess. Overall, it currently has several religious-discrimination lawsuits in litigation, O'Neill said. "It's not OK for employers to prefer a group of people because of their religion or to discriminate or adversely impact them in any way in their job because they don't belong to a certain religion," she said. "That's what you have in this case." Katherine Kruse, an EEOC trial attorney in Phoenix, said the agency's investigation revealed "LDS favoritism in both initial assessment of leads and redistribution of leads." The university recruits students through Internet advertising and other sources, and those leads are funneled to enrollment counselors working at call centers and campuses. Former enrollment counselor Bob Lein, who filed a complaint with the EEOC in 2003 and is named in the lawsuit, said Mormon managers on his team at the University of Phoenix Online gave the best leads or extra leads and student registrations to "their Mormon friends on the team." "They would get more enrollments, they'd get good reviews and some of them got promoted out of it," he said. "They took care of them." Lein said his enrollment numbers fell, so he was reprimanded and fired two years ago. The EEOC lawsuit also says he was terminated in retaliation for complaining about discrimination. One of the former workers named in the lawsuit was initially denied tuition waivers, which the company offers as a job perk. The lawsuit seeks relief on behalf of Lein, three other named individuals and an undetermined number of other employees and former employees. The EEOC is seeking back pay, damages for emotional distress and punitive damages. No court date has been set. |
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