Weather Channel Anchor Who Says She Was Fired for Military Service Speaks Out in New Interview

The former Weather Channel anchor who says she was fired over her status as an Air Force reserve officer gave an extensive interview to radio host Joe “Pags” Pagliarulo on Monday, laying out her lawsuit against the network.

As The Blaze previously reported, Nicole Mitchell is suing the Weather Channel and its parent companies for violating her rights under the Uniformed Services Employment and Reemployment Rights Act of 1994, claiming her contract wasn't renewed because management didn't want to contend with the time she took off military duties.

In one instance, she said she was reprimanded for choosing her weekend Air Force commitment over a hair appointment. In another, she said she was told she had to first clear any military duties with her superiors.

"All they've ever said is business decision, business decision," Mitchell told Pagliarulo, a frequent fill-in host for Glenn Beck. "But when you look at it in the context of being harassed up to that point...it's just like an employer that discriminates over anything else."

She continued, "If you had a minority that was being harassed, harassed, harassed and then all of a sudden was let go, oh we don't have a reason why, it was just a business reason, you know, you would look at that history and say, well if that's the only thing that the employer ever had to complain about, this is what it is."

Mitchell, who holds the rank of captain, said there were never any major issues until the Weather Channel was sold in 2008 to NBC Universal and private equity firms Bain Capital and the Blackstone Group.

"We'd had some scheduling challenges from time to time, but I never felt like my job was in peril or I'd never had statements like, 'This impacts everyone' -- basically that my military service was inconvenient to them," she said.

Mitchell said she didn't initially want to go public with the lawsuit.

"If you're the person that files the lawsuit, no matter how justified it is, there's a certain stigma attached to that," she said. But ultimately, "we really wanted to raise awareness of how widespread this problem is. There's a lot of great employers, but the ones that aren't doing the right thing really make it miserable for people who are already sacrificing a lot."

Listen to the full interview below: