Court rules lesbian chef is owed $1.6M after boss prayed to 'cure her of her sexuality'

A New York appeals court has affirmed a lower court’s 2012 ruling that a lesbian chef is owed $1.6 million for being forced to attend weekly prayer meetings where her boss would regularly warn that "gay people" were "going to go to hell."

Mirella Salemi sued Gloria's Tribeca Inc., Gloria's Tribecamex and principal owner Edward Globokar for violations of the New York City Human Rights Law after a string of incidents that occurred between 2004 and 2007. Gloria's Tribeca is a Mexican restaurant.

Salemi was awarded $400,000 in compensatory damages and $1.2 million in punitive damages in what her lawyer, Derek Smith, called "the largest employment verdict in 2012 in New York." A three-judge panel of the Appellate Division's Manhattan-based First Department affirmed the verdict for Salemi.

“He not only threatened her soul, but he also threatened her livelihood,” Smith told the New York Post in 2012. “He thought praying might cure her of her sexuality, but she is someone who didn’t need to be saved.”

Globokar had attempted to argue that he was simply exercising his right to free speech.

"The trial court properly protected Globokar's First Amendment rights by instructing the jury that he had 'a right to express his religious beliefs and practice religion, providing that he does not discriminate against his employees based on religion or sexual orientation,'" the judges wrote in their ruling.

[Courthouse News Service] [New York Post]