Legal Question in Discrimination Law in Virginia
I recently went to the Social Services building with a friend of mine who was applying for Food Stamps and the case worker was being extremely rude to her. The said case worker was automatically assuming that my friend was lying about everything and the worker was also threatening to send a fraud specialist to her house. The worker was also black and my friend is white.
I very well do believe that this was a race issue because I myself have applied for Food Stamps in the state of New York very recently and I haven't had nowhere near as hard of a time going through the interview as she did.
The case worker was making it very hard for my friend to get what she had to do done.
I just want to know if this is legal.
Can they really just be that rude to you and assume that your lying and threaten to send fraud agents out to your house and threaten you jail time for lying?
-Jacob Berger
1 Answer from Attorneys
Your friend should send a letter of complaint to the supervisor of
this rude intake worker describing his unpleasant and perturbing experience
in applying for the federal Food Stamp program.
Rude behaviour in human beings, however, can have many causes/motivations,
and from your description of the matter, I would not necessarily
conclude that racial bias on the part of this intake worker had anything to do with it.