Judge rules that bus driver fired for using the “n-word” deserves unemployment pay
A black bus driver who was fired by the Des Moines school district because she used the “n-word” in front of a black student who threatened her deserves unemployment pay, an administrative law judge has ruled. School officials have appealed the decision and say her remark constituted job misconduct. Anita Anderson testified during a state hearing on her request for benefits that she was driving elementary school students when a male student became disruptive and belligerent: “I kept asking him to sit down. And he kept on and on. He said he was going to bust me in my face.” After she told the boy not speak her in that manner, Ms. Anderson muttered under her breath, she said. “I was talking to myself,” she testified. “I was driving, and I said the word. You know, the 'n-word.' But I wasn't talking to the student; I was just talking to myself.” She testified that a girl behind her overheard the remark and told others on the bus. That prompted another outburst from the boy who had threatened her. “That little boy kept saying, ‘Oh, when we get to the bus stop my mom and dad is going to beat you down. Oh, we're going to bust you in your face,’” she said. When she finished her route and returned to the bus garage, she was told that the student's mother had complained that the epithet was directed at her son.
School district officials fired Ms. Anderson and challenged her claim for unemployment pay. The administrative law judge concluded that while Ms. Anderson exercised poor judgment, she had not committed misconduct and was entitled to collect unemployment pay. The school district has appealed the ruling. Catherine McKay, the district's risk manager, argues that Ms. Anderson's “behavior was directed toward a student” and that it constituted job-related misconduct. Ms. Anderson says she regrets making the remark and would apologize to the child’s parents, but she insists the remark was not directed at him. "I'm a Christian. ... I'm also an African American,” she says. “I know how whites or Caucasians or different people perceive that word.”
Des Moines Register
By Clark Kauffman
[Full story]
[Editor’s Note: A sidebar to the article excerpted above relates another incident in which a Des Moines school bus driver fired after an outburst after a sixth-grader cursed and spat on him has won unemployment benefits. “I called dispatch and told them, 'This little brat just spit on me, and he is cussing at me. What am I supposed to do? I know I can't touch him, so get his dad down here so I can bust him in the mouth instead.'" The Iowa Employment Appeals Board ruled, “Any reasonable person would have found it difficult under the chaotic circumstances to maintain even the amount of control [the driver] displayed after having been assaulted the way he was.”]