SEPTA Worker Fired After She’s Spotted on “Live! with Kelly and Michael” While on Sick Leave

Photo by Jeff Fusco

If you’re on sick leave, it’s probably best to stay out of the public eye — not attend a taping of a national TV show. But a SEPTA worker got fired after she was spotted during a taping of Live! with Kelly and Michael, and it’s stopped her discrimination case against the agency in its tracks.

Marie Selvato, a bus operator, sued SEPTA in U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania, claiming that since 2004 she was “subjected to a hostile work environment and discriminated against on the basis of her gender” — and that was the reason she was terminated in 2012. But Judge Wendy Beetlestone disagreed, granting SEPTA’s summary judgement motion.

Director of Transportation Michael Lyles got tipped off by a SEPTA employee who sent a YouTube link of Selvato in the New York studio audience, court documents said. He then gave her a written notice that attending the show was against the agency’s sick leave policy and she was fired on January 9, 2013.

Still her discrimination claims against SEPTA were “deeply troubling” said Beetlestone.

The Legal Intelligencer reported on specifics regarding Selvato’s discrimination claims, saying that she “was often directed to drive SEPTA Senior Director Amato Berardi to have coffee, and once Berardi asked her to dinner. During these drives, Berardi often talked about the size of his penis, Selvato claimed, according to Beetlestone.” It also said “after co-workers began putting stickers on Selvato’s desk accusing her of ‘doing it’ with Berardi, she asked Berardi if she could stop driving him around. Around the same time, a co-worker also referred to Selvato, who had Alfredo sauce on her mouth, as having ‘Amato sauce’ on her mouth.”

Court documents also say that in 2008, “Assistant General Manager Michael Liberi asked Selvato and a female co-worker when they lost their virginities, told Selvato she had a ‘great rack,’ made a comment that Selvato was ‘working the street,’ stated that strings on Selvato’s blouse were dangling across her breasts and distracting him because he wanted to touch them, and asked Selvato whether she was going to be at the shore during the time he was on vacation and said, ‘what can you do for me?’ ”

Selvato made a complaint to SEPTA’s Director of Equal Employment Opportunity and Affirmative Action in 2009.

Olugbenga O. Abiona, Selvato’s lawyer, told the Intelligencer that she will be appealing the decision.