Michigan Home Health Provider to Pay $41,137 in Employee Settlement

Mid-Michigan Home Health & Hospice, L.L.C. will pay $41,137 to a former certified nurse assistant and introduce annual staff training and reporting under a five-year consent decree. The agreement resolves a race discrimination and retaliation case centered on how the provider assigned home visits in Grand Blanc, Michigan.

The case highlights how work scheduling can affect both an employee’s access to assignments and a care provider’s staffing records. The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission said the company gave a white CNA more home visits than a Black CNA hired a month earlier, and that the Black employee was dismissed within 48 hours of raising concerns about assignments removed from her schedule.

Assignment patterns at the center of the case

According to the agency’s complaint, Mid-Michigan hired the Black CNA in April 2023. The following month, it hired a white CNA and assigned her more home visits. When the Black employee asked about the difference, she was told that the white employee could travel to places she could not because Grand Blanc residents were “old-time” and “did not care for black people,” the complaint said.

The agency’s account also focused on how often employees were sent to Grand Blanc. Although the Black CNA lived closer to the area than white employees, she was assigned there 5 times in two months. In that same period, three white employees were sent there over 135 times.

The sequence continued when the employee challenged changes to her schedule. She complained that three Grand Blanc assignments had been removed and given to a white colleague. The company terminated her within 48 hours, according to the agency. Those details connect the dispute over the distribution of visits with the separate allegation that the employee faced retaliation after speaking up.

Settlement terms extend beyond payment

The five-year agreement provides $41,137 to the former employee. It also requires Mid-Michigan to give all employees annual training on race discrimination and to submit annual reports covering discrimination complaints and the locations assigned to each home health aide.

The reporting terms make assignment patterns a continuing part of the settlement. Records showing where aides are sent, alongside records of complaints, can help track whether scheduling decisions are consistent across employees and whether concerns receive attention. The source does not describe the format of those reports, how the company will conduct the training, or whether any additional remedies were included.

The agreement resolves the case without a trial finding on the allegations. The agency said it filed suit after attempting to reach a settlement through its administrative conciliation process. The case is identified as EEOC v. Mid-Michigan Home Health & Hospice L.L.C., Case No. 26-cv-10632, in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Michigan.

What the case means for staffing practices

Home health providers depend on assigning workers to visits across the communities they serve. Differences in geography, availability and client needs can shape those schedules. In this case, the agency pointed to the number of Grand Blanc assignments, the employee’s proximity to the area and the explanation she said she received when she asked about the disparity.

For employees, assignment decisions can determine access to work and can become a source of concern when colleagues appear to receive different opportunities. For providers, the settlement’s training and reporting requirements put attention on how those decisions are documented and how employee complaints are handled. The details available do not establish how the company made each assignment or whether other factors affected the schedules.

The practical measure to watch is whether the required annual process produces records that let the provider review both complaint patterns and aide placement over time. The agreement sets those duties for five years; its terms do not specify what future reports may show.