Woman wins another bias suit against Yeadon

A woman who won a discrimination lawsuit against the Borough of Yeadon two years ago has won a second ruling in a discrimination claim against the borough.

Christi Vitullo sued Yeadon in 2006 after applying unsuccessfully for a full-time police secretary position. Vitullo is white. The borough is 81 percent black, according to the 2000 Census report.

After Vitullo had interviewed, the job was re-posted in the Philadelphia Tribune and then offered to a black woman, according to court records.

Now, the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission has found that the borough retaliated against Vitullo after the 2006 verdict, taking away part-time transcription work she had been performing.

Vitullo, 30, a medical office assistant from Lansdowne, does not want the part-time work back. If she and borough officials cannot agree on a settlement, Vitullo could sue Yeadon again, said her attorney, Mark Sereni. The borough, in part through its insurance company, already has paid Vitullo the $25,000 stipulated in the 2006 verdict plus almost $85,000 in legal and court fees.

Yeadon Mayor Jacqueline Mosley, who was accused of facilitating the hiring of a black woman over Vitullo, called the cases absurd. She said she had encouraged Police Chief Donald Molineaux to seek diverse candidates so the government workforce would better reflect the community population.

"If you take a look at the composition of this borough, every department head in this borough is Caucasian," she said. "I don't know how they came up with discrimination."

Mosley also said the borough had stopped offering Vitullo transcriptions because there wasn't enough work for her and there was someone else at borough hall to take care of the work.

But Marie Tomasso, the EEOC's Philadelphia District director, wrote in in the commission's ruling that the borough had stopped offering Vitullo work immediately after a newspaper article about the 2006 verdict was published. The borough paid the other employee a dollar more per hour to do the work Vitullo had been doing, according to the EEOC ruling.

Vitullo declined comment through her attorney because the settlement from the EEOC ruling is still pending.

In response to Mosley's comments, Sereni said: "Both a federal jury and now the EEOC, after reviewing all of the evidence, clearly see things differently from how Mayor Mosley would like us to see."