Feminist and civil rights attorney Gloria Allred announced at a press conference Thursday that she is representing Sarah Tressler in her sexual discrimination complaint against the Houston Chronicle. Tressler, who worked as a full-time society reporter for the paper for two months, alleges the newspaper discriminated against her when they fired her for not disclosing her past as a stripper.
Here are the allegations, as outlined in Tressler’s one-page complaint to the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission:
On 27 March 2012, I was notified by [Houston Chronicle editor] Jeff Cohen that I was being terminated because my prior activity as an adult dancer was not disclosed when I applied for the job. I believe that the stated reason for my termination was pretextual in that I answered the questions that were put to me truthfully in connection with my application for employment. The true reason for my termination was discrimination on account of my gender
This would mean she was fired a day after the Houston Press‘s Richard Connelly outed Tressler as an “angry stripper” on his paper’s blog.
Allred explained the allegation in a statement to LA Weekly: “Most exotic dancers are female, and therefore to terminate an employee because they had previously been an exotic dancer would have an adverse impact on women, since it is a female dominated occupation. Terminations like this would also discourage women from trying to improve their lives.”
Radar Online broke the news Thursday morning that Allred would be representing Tressler. Thursday afternoon, Tressler tweeted a picture of herself with Allred, along with the line “Couldn’t ask for anyone better by my side … So grateful.” Tressler has yet to update her website about the lawsuit, but she did mention in a post last week that she was looking forward to an “upcoming trip to Los Angeles,” the city where Allred’s offices just happen to be located.
Tressler, who sat down with ABC News’s Felicia Patinkin in late March to discuss her firing, has since hinted she has netted a book deal about her experience.
Read the EEOC complaint below:
