Former Employee Sues Planned Parenthood Over Alleged Racism
In early 2016, before his resignation from Planned Parenthood, former staff member David Daleiden was confronted by an anti-choicers group.
David Daleiden. AP/Michael Paulsen hide caption
itoggle caption AP/Michael Paulsen
David Daleiden.
AP/Michael Paulsen
He had been making news for a few months, for his undercover videos exposing the anti-choice group’s activities. The videos had sparked protests in several states, culminating in a near-riot in front of the Illinois Capitol in which people threw a variety of things — cups, chairs — at the state’s lawmakers.
Now Daleiden was being confronted by a different anti-choicer group.
He’d recently been fired from the organization, after his undercover videos were made public.
Troy Newman, an attorney representing Daleiden, says the footage exposed bias against Planned Parenthood, and Planned Parenthood employees were retaliating against him.
“There’s just no equal protection under the law, and that’s why as an attorney I’ve spent my life fighting that,” Newman says.
For more on what happened, check out NPR’s reporting on the case, which includes multiple interviews, the lawsuit and more.
After Daleiden was fired in May, he made the decision to go public with his charges anonymously, which, Newman says, wasn’t enough to deter the anti-choicer group from firing him.
“In his [initial lawsuit] he did not know who he was and did not know that he was the person,” Newman says. “The only thing he had to go on was because of his job. And that was a huge gap. It was a huge gap in the system.”
The first time Newman met Daleiden, he says, “We were in an office with two rooms: one for his office, and one for the office for the anti
