Home 
MANILA, Philippines?A United States judge has dismissed the discrimination case filed by Filipino health care workers against SentosaCare nursing homes in New York, INQUIRER.net learned Wednesday.
In her June 30 decision, administrative law judge Ellen K. Thomas ruled that the Filipino complainants ?failed to establish? that the civil lawsuit and administrative case filed by Sentosa against them were in retaliation for their resignations, a ?protected conduct? under US labor laws.
The Sentosa case has triggered international controversy, implicating US Senator Charles Schumer and former Philippine Presidential chief of staff Michael Defensor for intervening in behalf of Sentosa.
The case started when 26 nurses resigned from their jobs in April 2006 over working conditions which they said were contrary to their employment contracts. In their complaint before the US Justice Department's Office of Special Counsel for Immigration-related Unfair Employment Practices, they alleged that they worked for non-Sentosa facilities.
The nurses complained that Sentosa retaliated by filing lawsuits, lodging complaints to the nursing disciplinary board and enlisting the help of Suffolk District Attorney Thomas Spota, whose office secured a grand jury indictment of 10 nurses who resigned from Avalon Gardens Rehabilitation and Health Care Center in Smithtown. A state appellate court halted that prosecution in January, ruling it unconstitutional.
Administrative Law Judge Ellen K. Thomas of the Office of the Chief Administrative Hearing Officer in Falls Church, Va., which decides immigrant employment cases, rejected the nurses' claims, saying the resignations were not protected by federal immigration employment law.
The Philippine Overseas Employment Administration has also dismissed charges of illegal recruitment filed by the nurses against Sentosa.
Thomas ruled that SentosaCare's complaints to the State Education Department and its lawsuits were not retaliatory because they were filed before company officials knew that the nurses had filed Justice Department complaints. She said there was no evidence that SentosaCare "caused" the indictment of the Avalon nurses.
