She kept a certification for 12 years — then learned her coworkers never needed one
Shriners Hospital for Children faces a federal lawsuit alleging it held a minority employee to credentialing standards her peers never had to meet.
Nicole Cotton, who identifies as a Black/Asian, Korean woman, filed the case on April 8 in the Northern District of Illinois (Cotton v. Shriners Hospital for Children, No. 1:26-cv-03879). The suit alleges race and national origin discrimination, retaliation, and constructive discharge under Title VII and the Illinois Human Rights Act.
Cotton worked as an orthopedic technician at the hospital's Chicago location starting in October 2013. According to the filing, she was told at the time of hire that the role required national board certification as an orthopedic technologist — a credential she obtained and maintained for more than a decade.
The trouble started, the lawsuit alleges, when Cotton discovered after more than 11 years of service that colleagues holding the same cast technician title were never required to get or keep that certification. Those colleagues, the filing states, were not Black, Asian, or Korean.
When Cotton raised the discrepancy and requested reclassification based on her credentials and twelve years of experience, she was allegedly told she no longer needed the certification and that "you are just a cast tech and nothing but [a] cast tech[s]. That's all you are and that's all you're worth."
What followed, according to the lawsuit, reads like a cautionary tale in how not to handle an internal complaint.
Cotton alleges she was directed to train an unskilled employee to apply casts to children — a task she objected to on safety and liability grounds. When she pushed back, she received an oral reprimand. When she asked for the training directive in writing, she got a written reprimand instead. Her supervisor, she alleges, told her the reprimand was what she had requested.
The hospital promised a meeting to address her concerns, the filing states. That meeting never happened. Meanwhile, the lawsuit alleges the hospital hired additional employees who were not Black, Asian, or Korean, did not hold board certification, and were placed in the same cast technician role — with Cotton expected to train them.
She resigned, alleging the working conditions had become intolerable.
Cotton had filed a charge with the EEOC, which issued a right-to-sue notice on January 29, 2026, without making a determination on the merits. Her matter also remains pending with the Illinois Department of Human Rights as of the date of the filing. No court has ruled on the allegations, and no final determination has been made.
For HR leaders, the case puts a spotlight on a deceptively simple risk: when qualification standards are applied unevenly across a workforce, and the pattern happens to fall along racial lines, the exposure grows fast. Layer in a retaliation sequence that kicks off the moment an employee raises a question, and the picture gets worse. Cotton's performance reviews, which the filing states ranged from 3.6 to 4.0 on a 4.0 scale throughout her tenure, only sharpen the contrast.
The takeaway is not complicated. Consistent standards, consistently applied — and a complaint process that does not punish the person who speaks up — remain the most basic safeguards an employer can have.
