An ex-employee of a Home Depot store in Lemon Grove, which is down San Diego way, filed a lawsuit in Orange County Superior Court that alleges the hardware superstore's management discriminates against gay people.
Hardy Housh, 57, claims he was harassed and then fired after 25 years with Home Depot not because of cause but a strategy to lower payroll and benefits by eliminating workers more likely to rack up medical bills for HIV- and AIDS-related treatments.
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That, the suit filed earlier this month points out, amounts to discrimination under the California Domestic Relationship Act. Housh, who had been an assistant manager, claims the company targeted employees based on age and sexual orientation to lessen Home Depot's financial obligations.
Housh now wants Home Depot to be financially obligated to pay him $100,000 in damages.
He claims in the suit he was subjected to his superiors filing false write-ups and sending him sexually explicit pictures attached to e-mails. The harassment, he claims, began when he included his partner in his insurance plan.
Home Depot has denied the allegations, which are shocking when you consider this YouTube video that went viral:
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OC Weekly Editor-in-Chief Matt Coker has been engaging, enraging and entertaining readers of newspapers, magazines and websites for decades. He spent the first 13 years of his career in journalism at daily newspapers before “graduating” to OC Weekly in 1995 as the alternative newsweekly’s first calendar editor.