LAKE CHARLES – A Walmart employee has filed a lawsuit against the company, alleging sexual harassment, discrimination based on sex and disability, failure to accommodate her disability and retaliation.
Plaintiff Kizzy A. Victorian filed a lawsuit in federal court against Walmart. She claims she was subjected to a hostile work environment at a Walmart Supercenter in Sulphur, causing her emotional distress which eventually forced her to take a medical leave of absence.
According to court documents, Victorian is a female who has been medically diagnosed with several disorders that substantially impair her ability to concentrate and focus. As such, she is a member of a protected class. Victorian says she was employed by the defendant to work at a Supercenter located in Lake Charles on March 19, 2018, and that she was eventually transferred to another Supercenter located in Sulphur.
While she was an employee at the Sulphur location, Victoria says she was subjected almost daily to various forms of harassment and discrimination, including derogatory comments, physical contact, unwarranted disciplinary actions, and threats, allegedly perpetrated by her supervisors and other employees. She claims that she made several reports to management, human resources, and the company's global ethics department, which did not lead to any meaningful remedial action.
Victorian says the behavior of her supervisors and coworkers was a trigger of her disabling conditions, and she requested a lateral transfer to a different store, which would have permitted her to perform her job duties without issue while keeping the same pay level. Despite her reasonable request, she says her supervisor denied her request for a lateral transfer and instead forced her to accept a job at a lower-level store, which resulted in a decrease in her pay. Victorian claims that despite being transferred to a new location, one of the supervisors from the Sulphur location purposely came to her new job location to harass and threaten her. Victorian states that the encounter was so traumatic that she had to request a medical leave of absence and that she's been on leave since July 2023.
According to the lawsuit, the actions of the defendants' employees constitute creating a sexually hostile work environment, discrimination on the basis of sex and disability in violation of Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA), failure to accommodate her disability, and retaliation for engaging in protected activities under Title VII and the ADA.
Victorian is seeking damages for emotional pain and suffering, inconvenience, mental anguish, loss of enjoyment of life, back pay, front pay, medical and other benefits, and other losses, plus attorney's fees, pre-judgment and post-judgment interest, costs, injunctive relief, and any other relief the court deems proper. She is represented in this case by attorney James E. Sudduth, III and Kourtney L. Kech of Sudduth & Associates, LLC in Lake Charles.
U.S. District Court for the Western District of Louisiana case number 2:23-CV-01416