A Colorado hospital reported a Black nurse to the state after a patient’s death, but a jury awarded her $20 million

A federal jury in Colorado ordered HCA-HealthOne to pay $20 million to DonQuenick Joppy, a Black intensive care nurse who said the company fired her for complaining about racial discrimination. Jurors found unanimously that both race discrimination and retaliation drove her termination. The award breaks into $5 million in compensatory damages and $15 million in punitive damages, returned on Aug. 19, 2025, after a seven-day trial.

Joppy, 41, lost her job at The Medical Center of Aurora in June 2019. Weeks earlier, a man of 93 had arrived in the unit on a ventilator, his organs failing and sepsis setting in, and he died there once his family agreed to withdraw the machine. The hospital reported her conduct to state health authorities, and the Colorado Attorney General’s Office later charged her with manslaughter and negligent death of an at-risk person. That office dropped both felonies in September 2021, “in the interest of justice.”

According to Atlanta Black Star, Joppy said she turned off the ventilator on instructions a respiratory therapist gave her by phone. She remained in the room with his relatives until he was gone. A medical examiner attributed the death to natural causes. The hospital concluded she had gone beyond what her nursing role permitted. It stated that protocol required her to wait for the therapist, and denied any such instruction was given.

What she says was happening long before that night

Her complaint describes years of “verbal and nonverbal slights and microaggressions” from mostly non-Black managers in the unit. One charge nurse denied her cardiac training offered to other nurses, she said, and in early March 2019 told her that since she was good at cleaning, she should “clean his house and clip his dog’s toe nails.” She also said she handled up to three critically ill patients at once while other nurses worked in pairs.

That same month, Joppy applied for a higher-paying transfer. She found out on the day of her interview that it had been cancelled, because a performance improvement plan she knew nothing about made her ineligible. The plan rested on unsubstantiated complaints from the same charge nurses she had already reported, the lawsuit said.

HCA-HealthOne rejected all of it. The company denied any racial hostility in its workplace or discriminatory treatment of Joppy, saying she was terminated over end-of-life care protocols she failed to follow and for working past what her license allowed. Its report to the state was a statutory obligation, the company said, and it did not know the attorney general would file charges. “We strongly disagree with the outcome of this trial and will appeal,” a spokesperson said.

The verdict came under 42 U.S.C. § 1981, a Reconstruction-era law barring race discrimination in contracts, and that choice of statute explains the number. Had the claim run through Title VII of the Civil Rights Act instead, combined compensatory and punitive damages would have been capped at $300,000 for an employer this size, under 42 U.S.C. § 1981a. Section 1981 carries no cap, and Section 1981a states outright that it does not limit relief available under it.

Joppy told the Denver Post she has had unstable housing since the firing and lived apart from her teenage daughter. “For six long years, I fought to defend my integrity as a nurse,” she said.