A former director of a day care at the University of Utah is suing the school, saying she was fired for resisting changes that would have violated state rules for licensure.
In a lawsuit filed Thursday, Christine Medina claims that since 2019, university officials were pushing for expansion of the BioKids day care, which she directed and which cares for the children of employees of the U.’s School of Biological Sciences. Child care slots statewide are in high demand, with state data showing Utah’s day cares have room for only about a third of the children who require care. https://www.sltrib.com/news/2020/03/27/utah-meets-only-third/
But the university’s plan for BioKids — to double its capacity to include the children of employees in other science departments — exceeded the capacity of the day care’s building and rules limiting the number of children a care center can accept, the lawsuit argues. The proposal to double class sizes and increase the ratios of children to employees would “compromise health and safety standards for children and staff,” the lawsuit states.
When Medina told them as much, university officials began excluding her from meetings, according to the complaint. And, the lawsuit states, when the project manager over a pending building renovation at the day care told Medina about the meetings on the expansion proposal, he was fired.
A few months later, after continued dispute over the proposed expansion, Medina herself was furloughed and then fired, the lawsuit states.
Medina’s firing broke state laws protecting public employees who try to address violations of regulations and amounted to a breach of contract, the lawsuit argues. It also violated her First Amendment rights and deprived her of due process, as she was not an “at will” employee when she was fired, the complaint states.
University of Utah spokesman Chris Nelson said the U. doesn’t have a comment on the lawsuit because it hasn’t had a chance to review it yet.
