Areas of Law Practice

The doctor-patient relationship is supposed to be one of the most sacred, and trusted relationships. But, unfortunately, some doctors violate that trust. Doctor sexual abuse can have devastating consequences to victims.

As a patient rights lawyer, Tamara Holder is currently litigating the largest known case of doctor-patient sexual abuse in the State of Illinois’s history. The defendants, Northshore University Health System and Swedish Hospital, are large health care providers accused of harboring gynecologist Fabio Ortega – a convicted sex offender – who used his position of trust to groom female patients to disguise his sexual assaults during gynecological exams.

Prominent cases across the country make it clear that doctor-patient sexual abuse may be more common than previously believed. Many victims are afraid to come forward or have suppressed their memory of abuse from years prior. An accusation of sexual assault against a medical professional is profoundly serious; if proven, the allegation can end a career. Victims are often afraid of being disbelieved or subjected to counteraccusations and lawsuits. In the event they decide to come forward, patients must feel that they are protected by a lawyer.

If you believe you are the victim of doctor sexual abuse, know that you can contact Attorney Tamara Holder to discuss your case in absolute confidence. Privacy and confidentiality are central values of the legal profession and of Tamara Holder’s law practice. As a sexual assault lawyer, Holder can explain what’s at stake when bringing a case against an abuser or a healthcare system believed to have facilitated, ignored, or covered up a doctor’s history of sexual abuse of patients. As a patient sexual assault lawyer, Holder can assess the case and determine a recommended course of action to end the alleged abuse and take steps to ensure it would never happen again.

Sometimes, an employer doesn’t outright fire an employee. Instead, they make working conditions so intolerable that they force the employee to quit, or the employer does not fire the employee but takes them off the schedule. This is called “constructive discharge.”

Constructive discharge can occur when an employer tolerates a discriminatory environment. Employees subjected to unrelenting racial or sexual harassment, age discrimination, or failure to provide reasonable accommodations for a disability may feel they have no choice but to quit.

Other kinds of unfair dismissal include firings that violate public policies, like terminating employment because someone takes legally mandated medical leave under the Families and Medical Leave Act (FMLA), discharging someone because they reported wrongdoing (whistleblowing), or terminating employment because an employee refuses to commit an illegal act (like “cooking the books”).

A wrongful termination lawyer can help you determine if you can make a case that you were fired illegally. Talk with an unfair dismissal lawyer about what happened to you, and what remedy you are seeking. Do you really want your job back? Or do you want compensation for lost wages or for the damage the termination did to your career and your finances?

Tamara Holder is an experienced wrongful termination lawyer, serving as an employment dispute lawyer in cases involving sexual harassment, hostile work environments, racism, ageism, and contractual disputes. Contact the Law Firm of Tamara N. Holder, LLC, for legal advice regarding wrongful termination and possible legal remedies for your situation.

Unwelcome sexual comments and advances in the workplace are illegal, even if you are not physically touched. While physical assault or inappropriate touching are certainly forms of sexual harassment, sexual misconduct in the workplace can take the form of unwelcome comments that are sexual in nature, inappropriate or offensive displays of sexually explicit images or materials in the workplace, or unfair treatment based on the refusal to succumb to sexual advances.

In the most severe cases of sexual harassment, workers are subjected to unwanted sexual advances, physical assaults, or violations of privacy (such as hidden cameras in restrooms) that create hostile work environments based on gender.

Bullying, circulating humiliating and stereotypical gifs or memes are common forms of discrimination against LGBTQ+ workers. Tamara Holder holds employers accountable for ignoring, condoning, or even encouraging these forms of discrimination. As a sexual orientation discrimination lawyer, she’ll fight back when an employer denies raises or promotions, unfairly places LGBTQ employees on performance improvement plans (PIPs), or assigns extra work that isn’t required of other employees.

In 2020, the Supreme Court of the United States ruled in Bostock v. Clayton County that the prohibition against discrimination based on sex, included in Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, includes discrimination based on sexual orientation and gender identity when firing an employee.

Because the court’s decision was narrowly limited to termination of employment, battles over things like access to restrooms corresponding to a person’s gender identity rage on in the states. Nevertheless, Bostock remains the law of the land, and employers are prohibited from discharging employees because of their sexual orientation or gender identity.

The Equal Pay Act requires that women are paid the same amount as men for equal work. But in 2020, men were still paid 17 cents more than women per hour for the same work. Although the Equal Pay Act of 1963 established equal pay for equal work as the law of the land, employers have used loopholes in the law to justify paying women less than men.

And although Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 prohibits discrimination based on sex, which includes discrimination because of sexual orientation or gender identity, LGBTQ workers may still get paid less than heterosexual cisgender people doing the same kinds of jobs.

Equal pay lawyers know all the excuses for unequal pay for substantially similar work: seniority, “merit,” a claimed difference in the quality or the quantity of work, or “any factor other than sex,” including discriminatory working conditions. It’s remarkable, when a manager is questioned under oath, how porous these excuses for failing to provide equal pay for equal work can be. Tamara Holder loves to punch holes in the lame excuses for pay discrimination employers make when their true motivation is outright bias based on sex, including sexual orientation or gender identity.

The house of cards employers have built to excuse wage discrimination is starting to fall. Members of the US Women’s Soccer Team secured a multi-million-dollar settlement in their pay discrimination suit. Large companies like KPMG and Google have also paid millions in settlements, while lawsuits against Goldman Sachs and Sony Entertainment are ongoing.

This is good news for high-visibility women in large organizations, but the reality is that women are still paid an average of 82 cents for every dollar paid to a man. Low-wage workers who are dependent on their jobs and fearful of retaliation can feel too powerless to demand fair pay.

It is illegal to be treated differently in the workplace because of your race, ethnicity, color, or national origin. Unfortunately, race discrimination is still common, and even pervasive, in the workplace. Some employers create an employee handbook or a “diversity and inclusion” department but still, consciously or unconsciously, engage in race discrimination. Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 prohibits workplace discrimination on the basis of race.

Often times, employees are passed over for promotions, placed on probation or performance improvement plans without cause, demoted, excluded, or ridiculed in the workplace because of their race.

Still, even today, employers tolerate or ignore racial discrimination in their workplaces. Employers often condone threats; name-calling; physical and emotional abuse; the distribution of offensive images, memes, or GIFs; and humiliating work assignments. “It’s just a joke” isn’t an excuse for illegal, discriminatory treatment.

Age discrimination can begin as early as 40, and it takes many forms: being devalued, demoted, pushed into retirement, or fired. Many times, companies that engage in flagrant age discrimination are careful not to put their unlawful intentions in writing. Instead, they employ one of the oldest tricks in the book by assigning excess work to older workers or giving them projects for which they haven’t been trained so that the employer can claim the performance improvement plan (“PIP”) or termination is due to a decline in performance. Another tactic is to transfer older employees into roles with far fewer responsibilities, challenges, or opportunities in the hopes the employees will become discouraged and leave.

Flagrant age discrimination is sometimes a business strategy. For example, allegedly, tech-giant IBM called older workers “dinobabies” that must be turned into “an extinct species.” Prior to this revelation, employees had accused the company of age discrimination for years. Yet the company is still denying it adopted an explicit strategy of purging older workers from its ranks to replace them with “early professionals” and millennial-generation workers.

As an age discrimination attorney, Tamara Holder goes after employers who commit unlawful age discrimination. Tamara Holder knows the tricks, the loopholes, and the excuses employers try to hide behind. She can advise older workers about what to look for, what to document, and whether they have a compelling case.

If you’ve noticed age discrimination in the workplace, such as changes in work assignments, demotion without cause, transfers to lower-paying roles with little opportunity for growth, or termination in favor of a younger hire with less experience and fewer skills, contact an age discrimination lawyer today.

An employer cannot treat you unfairly due to your gender (male, female, or TGQN), or subject you to sexual harassment or pregnancy discrimination. Gender discrimination takes many forms, from adverse job actions like demotions or terminations and unequal pay or working conditions to soul-searing taunts, lewd images, jokes, and physical assaults. The Supreme Court and the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission have established that discrimination based on sexual orientation or gender identity is sex discrimination. Here’s language straight from the EEOC about the extent of protection from sex discrimination under the Civil Rights Act of 1964:

“Discrimination against an individual because of gender identity, including transgender status, or because of sexual orientation is discrimination because of sex in violation of Title VII.”

And yet gender discrimination lawyer Tamara Holder has found workplaces where employers ignore, tolerate, or fail to provide recourse or remedies for sex discrimination. Unequal treatment, harassment, taunts, threats, lewd images, assaults, name-calling, and “jokes” directed at individuals because of their sexual orientation or gender identity are still pervasive in many workplaces.

Female workers allege they have been forced to wear highly sexualized uniforms or have been “graded” based on their physical appearance. Gay, lesbian, transgender, queer, non-binary, and any other workers who are perceived to be different based on their sexuality or gender identity are supposed to be protected from exclusion from opportunity, unequal pay, demotion, unfair disciplinary proceedings, and termination because of who they are. Sexual discrimination lawyers know what it takes to prove sex discrimination and how to show that employers are breaking the law.

Some of the most flagrant examples of gender discrimination have the imposition of sexual quid pro quos (“sleep with me for a promotion, don’t and you’ll get demoted”), juvenile and demeaning invasions of privacy (like hidden cameras in restrooms), and failure to accommodate pregnant or nursing workers.

Severe or pervasive conduct in the workplace that is intimidating, hostile, or offensive is illegal. Interference with work performance, microaggressions, and gaslighting are all examples of hostile conduct. A hostile work environment requires proving that the employer is engaging in discriminatory conduct that is “severe” or “pervasive” due to the employee’s race, color, sex, national origin, religion, age, or disability are victims of illegal discrimination. A combination of federal laws prohibits discrimination based on these protected categories, and workers who are subjected to hostile conditions may have a cause of action under one or more of the following:

• Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964
• The Age Discrimination in Employment Act (ADEA)
• Rehabilitation Act of 1973, the Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990, and/or the Americans with Disability Act Amendments Act of 2008