Santana Employee Sues over 'Enlightenment' Firing

According to an E!Online report, plaintiff Bruce Kuhlman was fired by Deborah Santana because her spiritual guru – identified in the report only as “Dr. Dan” – decided he was insufficiently enlightened and his consciousness level was too low, and that he was too old to change either one.

Kuhlman, who was hired as an assistant in 1988 and later promoted to director of licensing before being fired in April 2004, is asking for damages in excess of $100,000.

Under California law, it is illegal to “bar or to discharge a person from employment” when it comes to “race, religious creed, color, national origin, ancestry, physical handicap, medical condition, marital status, or sex of any person.”

Kuhlman maintains in the suit that Deborah Santana based her hiring and firing decisions solely “on evaluation by Dr. Dan and his measure of the applicant’s ‘consciousness level.'”