Marlo Spaeth loved her job at Walmart. For nearly 16 years, she folded towels, organized aisles, and assisted customers at a store in Manitowoc, Wisconsin, with evaluations praising her time and again.
In 2014, they changed her afternoon schedule, the only one she had known since 1999. Marlo, who has Down syndrome, was unable to adapt, got home late, felt unwell, and missed work for fear of missing the bus. Walmart counted those departures as absences and fired her in 2015 for ‘excessive absenteeism.’ Her sister and legal guardian, Amy Jo Stevenson, said that Marlo ‘retreated into a bubble’ and kept repeating: ‘Why me? Why did they do this to me?’.
Stevenson asked for her previous shift to be restored. Walmart refused, even though its own supervisors admitted that other employees wanted those hours and that keeping Marlo cost them less money. The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission sued the company, and a jury in Wisconsin took three hours to rule against the retail giant, ordering it to pay more than $125 million, later reduced to $300,000 by law. Walmart has yet to say whether it will appeal.
