CONFIDENTIAL, ATTORNEY-CLIENT PRIVILEGED COMMUNICATION WORK-PRODUCT Greetings. On November 8, 2010 ARRL was served with a complaint filed against the Corporation with the State of Connecticut Commission on Human Rights and Opportunities (CHRO). The procedures of the Connecticut CHRO require a response to be filed within 30 days of the date of ARRL’s receipt of the Complaint. Thus, our answer is due on or before December 8, 2010. The Complaint was filed by Ms. Cynthia Rushton, WB3CNJ of Conneautville, PA (near Erie). Ms. Rushton is an ARRL member, at least until February of 2011. She apparently has some physical disability that causes her to utilize a wheelchair. Until late April of this year, Ms. Rushton was a VE with the ARRL-VEC and was a VE team liaison for a three-person examining team. We have no evidence of any exam irregularities involving any of her examination sessions. Ms. Rushton is apparently a difficult person with a contentious personality. Based on some complaints received from reliable field organization members, and from his own personal experience, Bill Edgar, N3LLR concluded that Ms. Rushton’s aggressive and confrontational manner was creating at examination sessions and otherwise a disincentive for persons to participate in examinations at venues in which Ms. Rushton was an examiner. Therefore, Bill Edgar asked the ARRL-VEC early this year to disaccredit Ms. Rushton, which the staff did based entirely on Bill’s request by letter dated April 20, 2010. When Ms. Rushton received this correspondence, she commenced a barrage of borderline harassing telephone calls to the Headquarters staff, demanding reinstatement and a statement of the “charges against her.” The staff had followed standard disaccreditation procedure in issuing the letter, including sending to Laura Smith at FCC a copy of the letter sent to Ms. Rushton. Ms. Rushton took this to mean that there was some threat to her amateur license. She was subsequently assured by the ARRL-VEC staff that this was not the case, but she continued to demand a listing of the allegations against her. Following standard policy, the staff refused to specify a reason for the disaccreditation, and simply told her that her volunteer services were no longer necessary, and she was thanked for her past service. She was told that no one associated with ARRL had made any allegations against her to FCC. Ms. Rushton’s strident effort to be reinstated as a VE culminated in an e-mail addressed to Maria Somma dated May 14, 2010 reporting the results of Ms. Rushton’s research, and noting that she had contacted Pennsylvania, Connecticut and Federal agencies concerning ARRL’s obligations to her. There were clear inferences that unless ARRL reinstated her as a VE immediately, she would pursue legal remedies against ARRL. At this point, the staff (again, following standard procedure) referred all further contacts by Ms. Rushton to my office. I asked Ms. Rushton by e-mail, in view of her threat of legal action, to please put all future communications on the subject of her VE status in writing or e-mail and to send them to me. I informed her, as had the ARRL-VEC staff, that her application for accreditation as a VE included the following certification: CERTIFICATION By signing this Application form, I certify that to the best of my knowledge the above information and the following statements are true: ***** 4) I understand that the ARRL as my coordinating VEC, or I as an accredited ARRL VE, may terminate this relationship at any time, with or without any reason or cause. ***** Ms. Rushton acknowledged having signed this certification in a written e-mail, but asserted that we nevertheless had some nonspecific contractual obligation to continue her “at-will employment.” Of course, she has never been an employee of ARRL, and this apparently was the result of some flawed legal research on her part. Because of the outstanding threat of legal action by Ms. Rushton, at the time we changed liability carriers, Barry Shelley sent information and a memo from my office to both our old and current insurance companies describing the issue approximately a month ago. Ms. Rushton filed her complaint with the Connecticut CHRO asserting essentially that she is an “older” female with a date of birth of 06/12/1959, and who has physical disabilities. She said that her credentials had been revoked, in essence, because a group of male persons had “called for, both orally and in writing, [her] being silenced in whatever form they could arrange for.” She says that after she was disaccredited, certain male persons were issued credentials in a new VE team. Three members of that new team were persons that were in the VE team that she “was the founder/leader/liaison of” shortly before her credentials were revoked. She therefore charges ARRL with discrimination against her based on her gender and physical disability. She alleges no facts whatsoever linking the disaccreditation with her asserted disability, and relative to the gender discrimination, she cites some statistics (that, as far as we can tell, were simply made up) to the effect that less than 10% of credentialed VEs are female and that female persons who are both licensed and VE-credentialed are “approximately less than 0.5% of the general population.” These statistics are prima facie baseless since gender information in this context is not collected anywhere as far as we know. Barry Shelley has now notified our insurance company of this claim, and we have received a standard reservation of rights letter, but we expect to be referred to counsel in Connecticut to represent us in this matter imminently. Due to the short period for a response and the delay in obtaining defense counsel, I have prepared a detailed memorandum for whoever that attorney turns out to be, and we will work with her or him immediately in order to get a timely answer filed to the Complaint. There exists no evidence that I can find that any discrimnation took place in this context. The sole reason for Ms. Rushton's disaccreditation seems to be that she is apparently not a pleasant person to deal with, and that she created at examination sessions an environment that was not conducive to encouraging new and upgrading candidates for Amateur licenses. Please, for obvious reasons, keep this information confidential and do not disclose any facts related to this administrative litigation to anyone. Let me know if you have any questions about this matter. 73, Chris W3KD Christopher D. Imlay Booth, Freret, Imlay & Tepper. P.C. 14356 Cape May Road Silver Spring, Maryland 20904-6011 (301) 384-5525 telephone (301) 384-6384 facsimile W3KD@ARRL.ORG