Tracy Miller (a.k.a. Dakota Rae)
SCOTTSDALE, AZ - Husband-and-wife nurses George and Tracy Miller, who lost their jobs over her adult Web site, have won the right to sue for their firings last year by Scottsdale Memorial Hospital.
Their attorney, Lawrence G. Walters, says George Miller got his green light March 7, with Tracy Miller (a.k.a. Dakota Rae) getting hers earlier. The couple had brought their grievance to the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, Walters says, because it involved their employers' retaliation over their exercising their First Amendment rights.
The Millers posted up the Dakota Rae site featuring Tracy in various states of undress on their off duty time, as a way to raise money for their children's education. Scottsdale Memorial suspended the couple last summer from their jobs as intensive care nurses, finally firing them in mid-September 1999 after an appeal of their initial suspension failed.
"We intend to seek compensation from the hospital for violating my clients' civil rights," Walters says. "According to our research, a suit like (this) one…would be the first of its kind, seeking compensation for a termination based on posting nude pictures on the Internet." The Millers have 90 days to file.
Scottsdale Memorial maintained from the outset that the Millers were suspended and then fired for violating sexual harassment policy, accusing the couple of trying to recruit fellow workers for the site (www.touchable.com). The couple had first sought to settle the matter out of court and demanded a public apology, but Walters had figured from the outset that the case would likely wind up in court.
When the hospital finally fired the couple, Walters told AVN On the Net their nursing careers were badly compromised, if not destroyed completely, because the hospital's labeling them as sexual harassers would make it difficult, if not impossible, for them to seek nursing employment for the foreseeable future. "(The Web site) was intended just as a college fund for their kids," he said. "The hospital has limited their ability to be employed in their chosen profession for the rest of their lives."
