Lesbian Firefighter Wins $1.75M In Retaliation Lawsuit

After over a decade of courtroom battles and a career marred by relentless harassment, former Providence Fire Department Lieutenant Lori Franchina has won a resounding legal victory. On April 11, a federal jury awarded Franchina $1.75 million in compensatory damages, finding the city of Providence retaliated against her after she sued for gender and sexual orientation discrimination.

Franchina, a proud lesbian and decorated rescue lieutenant, began her service in 2002. Her trajectory within the fire department was swift and impressive, but it came at a cost. By 2013, she says she was forced into early retirement, citing PTSD brought on by years of workplace abuse.

Her experiences ranged from the degrading—being called lewd nicknames and ignored in life-or-death emergency situations—to the grotesque. In one incident recounted in court documents, a colleague snapped a blood-covered glove in her face, splashing her with another person’s brain matter.

“That was the incident that broke me,” Franchina said, according to local NBC affiliate WJAR.

The city initially denied her 2011 application for an accidental disability pension, instead granting her an ordinary disability pension worth about $22,000 annually—barely 30% of her pre-retirement salary and fully taxable. An accidental disability pension would have provided over twice that amount, tax-free.

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In 2012, Franchina filed a lawsuit for gender discrimination and retaliation. She won in 2016, with a jury awarding her $806,000. The city appealed and lost.

But the retaliation didn’t stop. Despite the 2016 ruling affirming that Franchina’s disability stemmed from workplace trauma, Providence refused to reconsider her pension claim. When she petitioned to reopen her 2011 application in 2019, she submitted sworn medical testimony from two treating physicians. The Retirement Board still denied her in 2020, claiming “the claim had been litigated to conclusion.”

Franchina’s legal team called that claim false. According to her attorney, John Martin, “Two weeks before trial, we offered to go to mediation… just to give her a fair hearing, and they refused to even discuss it. They could’ve avoided millions of dollars.”

The jury didn’t buy the city’s arguments. After a four-day trial, they unanimously sided with Franchina, recognizing the denial of her pension as retaliation. With interest and legal fees, the total award is expected to reach between $4 and $5 million.

“That’s more than double what the city would have paid if they just granted her the Accidental Disability Retirement in the first place,” Martin said.

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“They had the opportunity to fix it, they really did,” Franchina said. “They just had to discipline a few, and instead this has been 15 years now and I won’t stop fighting until everything is said and done.”

Even now, the city of Providence is “evaluating the jury’s verdict and determining next steps,” according to a spokesperson for Mayor Brett Smiley. Whether or not they choose to appeal, the message from the jury—and from Franchina—is clear: retaliation has a price.

For Franchina, who says she still lives with PTSD, the win is more than symbolic.

“It gives me my gainful income, it gives me the ability to not decide what bill I’m paying,” she said. “I hope it helps somebody realize you can win.”