A female firefighter in Montana has filed a wrongful termination lawsuit after claiming she was fired for posting photos of herself on Instagram.
Presley Pritchard was a firefighter paramedic with the Evergreen Fire Rescue, located in the northern part of the state, and she claims that she fired because of her gender and singled out by the department for her social media use, the Daily Inter Lake reported.
Pritchard alleged in her complaint that she encountered multiple instances of sexual harassment in the nearly three years she spent in the department and that she was asked to take down social media posts showing her in workout and firefighter gear, while others in the department faced no such recourse, the newspaper added.
“Several male employees in the department have photos of themselves in uniforms and turnouts in front of fire trucks and at the department on their social media accounts,” Pritchard said in the complaint filed in January. “Importantly, Evergreen Fire Department does not have a social media policy and never has. I was directly targeted due to how I looked in my gym attire at a public gym.”
Pritchard, a self-described social media influencer with 135,000 followers (and quickly growing) on her Instagram account, had reportedly received verbal and written warnings from the department about her actions.
More from the Daily Inter Lake:
According to a disciplinary letter titled “Written Corrective Counseling,” Pritchard’s actions on social media violated two policies — the first being that when representing Evergreen Fire to the community, employees must not “engage in any conduct which would disparage Evergreen,” according to policy 3.1.
The department also alleged Pritchard violated a second policy that forbid employees from using Evergreen facilities for personal gain. The warning alleges she took promotional photos at the department that were later used to sell T-shirts online.
Pritchard was warned in the write-up that she would be terminated within five days if she had not removed all Evergreen Fire-related content from her personal social media pages. Pritchard was also demoted from a seasonal part-time firefighter/paramedic to part time as-needed.
Chief Craig Williams said in a statement in late December the department, which employs a “diverse staff … of which nearly half are female,” looked into Pritchard’s complaint, noting that she didn’t come forward while employed there.
“The District takes very seriously all allegations it receives concerning workplace conditions,” the chief said in the release. “While the Complainant never made or reported any allegations to the District while she was employed, the District hired an independent investigator to complete an investigation concerning the validity of the complaints. After a thorough investigation, no evidence was found to support any of the Complainant’s allegations.”
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The longest-tenured writer at BizPac Review, Tom grew up in Maryland before moving to Central Florida as a young teen. It is in the Sunshine State that he honed both his passion for politics and his writing skills.
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