James A. Byrne U.S. Courthouse in Philadelphia
PHILADELPHIA – A white woman has filed a racism lawsuit against the Philadelphia YMCA, alleging she was called a “cracker” whose “white ass” needed to be fired.
Mia Fedeli says she was the only non-Black employee at Juniata Park Academy, where she managed after-school programs for kids during eight months in 2024. She alleges in a lawsuit filed last week she was subjected to a hostile work environment, like a food delivery person calling her a “white bitch” and threatening to kill her.
Supervisors did not address her concerns over that incident and others, the suit says, and also fanned the flames by singling her out because of her race.
“Unlike her Black co-workers, Plaintiff avers she was also set up to fail and issued pretextual admonishment and discipline for manufactured and/or nonsensical reasons,” Fedeli says.
That included a dispute over an employee hired without National Sex Offender Registry. He had been transferred from another YMCA location, and Fedeli says she didn’t know he’d been hired until he showed up for work on his first day at Juniata Park Academy.
Attempts to retrieve his clearance documents were unsuccessful when the man’s former supervisor “falsely” claimed she did not have them or they did not exist. Before Fedeli could obtain new clearance documents, the man had worked 64 hours over three weeks without being paid, she says, adding that she was blamed when he was fired.
And the ADHD she disclosed was exacerbated when she was assigned to drive to Conshohocken in heavy traffic, the suit says, and when she was frequently yelled at. The end of her employment started in September 2024 when she took off half of her thumbnail trying to peel a partially frozen orange for a child.
Medical care providers ordered her off work for two days. When she returned, she was accused of being intoxicated in the presence of children – an excuse to deny her Workers’ Comp claim, the suit says.
She submitted three complaints over 16 days in September and was fired on Oct. 2, 2024. Ari Karpf of Karpf, Karpf & Cerutti is pursuing claims under the Americans with Disabilities Act, the state Human Relations Act and Title VII of the Civil Rights Act.
