Planet Fitness temporarily closed its doors March 17 due to the coronavirus outbreak. Tony Blasi/Sun Journal Buy this Photo

AUBURN — A Turner woman who applied for a job at a local fitness club and wasn’t hired filed a complaint with Maine Human Rights Commission, which found she was a victim of age discrimination.

Members of the commission voted unanimously last month that there were “reasonable grounds to believe” Planet Fitness on Center Street rejected Ann Varney because of her age.

A lawyer for the club had countered that Varney wasn’t the victim of discrimination. Instead, the company claimed she wasn’t hired because it wasn’t looking to fill the shifts and hours she had indicated she was available, according to a report authored by an investigator for the commission.

The investigator had concluded there were reasonable grounds to believe Varney had been the victim of discrimination when she applied for a job at the club in 2018. She filed a complaint in 2019. Varney’s age was not included in the report of the investigation.

Varney had been a member of the fitness center before applying for a part-time job as a member service representative in September 2018.

After applying the first time and being told her application hadn’t been received, she reapplied. Although she received online confirmation of her application, Varney said a manager at the club told her without looking at a computer that the club hadn’t gotten it, an assertion later disputed by the manager.

She reached out to the company’s attorney for relief, but never got a response, according to the investigator’s report.

Varney never got an interview for the job.

The company said it had only been seeking overnight employees, a shift in which the company claimed Varney had expressed no interest, so Varney wasn’t interviewed, the investigator wrote.

Since she had applied for a job, the company said it hired two part-time workers for first and second shifts; one had customers service and supervisory experience and the other, experience working at a gym.

According to her resume, Varney had experience working as a library director, a personnel commander/human resources officer and comptroller in the National Guard, director with the Special Olympics and assistant fitness director at a hospital. Her education includes a Bachelor of Science degree in physical education. She had a total of 37 years of military experience, the investigator wrote.

The investigator analyzed hiring records at the local gym during the time of Varney’s pending application and discovered that a 19-year-old woman had been hired for daytime shifts with two years of fast food experience as well as a 22-year-old man. Two others, who were 28 and 35 years old, had been hired for daytime shifts, both later switching to overnight positions. One of the men hired had only worked for a cleaning company. And one of the hires only was available for first shift, according to the investigator.

The company’s assertion that Varney wasn’t hired because of her limited availability “is directly contradicted by records provided by the company,” the investigator wrote.

In all, six part-time workers were hired by the company during the time Varney had applied, “none of whom appeared to have a more relevant job history than” Varney, according to the investigator. Nor did they have — according to their applications, greater availability.

Of the six successful applicants, four were in their 20s, one was 19, and one was 35, the investigator wrote.

Since finding reasonable grounds for age discrimination in Varney’s case, the commission has 90 days to attempt “conciliation” or mediation, according to the commission’s clerk. If an agreement isn’t reached in that time, the commission may file a civil court complaint.