Employment – Urgent care clinic prevails on former employee’s discrimination claims

Where an urgent care clinic terminated a physician for non-discriminatory reasons, it prevailed on her color, sex and national origin claims.

Background

Dr. Shaghayegh Mirshahi worked as a physician at one of Patient First Richmond Medical Group’s clinics. After she was fired, Mirshahi sued Patient First and two of its employees, asserting her termination violated Virginia public policy, state whistleblower protections and state and federal antidiscrimination laws. Mirshahi also alleged a state-law defamation claim. The district court ruled for the defendants on all claims.

Bowman claim

Virginia law “recognize[s] an exception to the doctrine of employment-at-will based on an employer’s violation of public policy in the discharge of an employee.” Before the district court, Mirshahi argued her termination violated public policies set out in two statutes.

On appeal, however, Mirshahi asserts Patient First’s conduct violated a COVID-era emergency regulation for infectious disease prevention “promulgated by the Virginia Department of Health.” These belated efforts to shift gears are unavailing. Mirshahi does not argue she can establish the sort of “exceptional circumstances” necessary to obtain relief on a forfeited claim.

And even if she could get over that forfeiture hurdle, Count One would still fail as a matter of law because the emergency COVID regulation Mirshahi cites does not contain the type of “explicit[ ] express[ion]” of public policy that her Bowman claim requires. The district court’s dismissal of Count One is affirmed.

Retaliation

Mirshahi insists she adequately alleged her supervisor’s orders to see patients while sick violated state and federal law, but that is not what the district court found lacking. Instead, the court concluded the complaint failed to adequately allege that Mirshahi made a “good faith report[]” about any such violation “to a supervisor or to any government body or law-enforcement official.” Mirshahi cites only one paragraph in the complaint to challenge the district court’s rejection of her claim. This court agrees with the district court that those allegations were insufficient.

Defamation per se

Mirshahi relies exclusively on a statement the defendant nurse allegedly made to unspecified “co-workers” while Mirshahi was “waiting for her COVID-19 test results”: “She is not sick. She is not sick . . . she’s pretending.” But this statement neither “relate[s] to the skills or character required to carry out the particular occupation of physician” nor casts doubt on her abilities as a doctor.

Discrimination claims

Mirshahi failed to produce sufficient evidence from which a jury could reasonably infer that Patient First fired her for unlawful reasons. Mirshahi points to two emails—one sent more than three months before she was fired; the other, three weeks before—in which the vice president referred to Mirshahi as “Shagi” and described her as “crazy,” respectively. But neither—at least without other evidence absent here—suffices to raise an inference of discrimination based on color, sex or national origin.

Mirshahi notes the vice president had announced an intent to discuss Mirshahi at an upcoming meeting before receiving the text messages Patient First asserts formed the basis for her termination. But the record is best read as establishing “that Dr. Mirshahi’s complaints of dealing with ageism, sexism, and racism” in the workplace—“rather than her color or national origin itself—were to be discussed at the meeting.” And even assuming a reasonable jury could infer that the vice president already viewed Mirshahi as a problem employee before seeing the text messages, that alone would not support a further inference that she was fired based on any protected characteristic.

Finally, Mirshahi asserts Patient First did not terminate one of its white employees—a physician’s assistant—despite a verbal outburst. But proposed comparators must be “similarly-situated in all respects,” and here they are not. What is more, there is no dispute that it was the vice president—not Mirshahi’s direct supervisor or that supervisor’s supervisor—who made the decision to fire her, and Mirshahi points to no evidence calling into question the vice president’s statement that he knew nothing about the physician’s assistant’s conduct.

Affirmed.

Mirshahi v. Patient First Richmond Medical Group, LLC, Case No. 25-1720, May 27, 2026. 4th Cir. (Heytens), from EDVA at Richmond (Lauck). Ellen K. Renaud for Appellant. David E. Constine III and Andrew J. Henson for Appellees. VLW 026-2-194. 10 pp.

Full-Text Opinion
VLW 026-2-194.