Mary Vandergrift’s pregnancy had been a difficult one; she had Crohn’s disease and had been in and out of the hospital several times. But on July 5, 2011, she gave birth to a girl.

Within five hours of the cesarian section delivery, she says, her bosses emailed to congratulate her — and to ask her if she could work from her hospital bed.

In a lawsuit filed Tuesday in federal district court that alleges abusive tactics, the former employee of AOL’s Golden Valley news website Patch claims AOL and Patch failed to accommodate her under the Americans with Disabilities Act, as well as the Family Medical Leave Act and other laws.

Vandergrift also claims that when she sought to exercise her rights, her bosses retaliated. Her paycheck was shorted. Technical support wouldn’t return her calls or emails. Her manager told her it was “inappropriate” for her to ask for help, she claims.

“Thereafter, every time plaintiff showed signs of suffering from her illness, her supervisor would get visibly upset or sigh dramatically and suggest that her job was at risk if she could not overcome her chronic/incurable illness more quickly,” the lawsuit claims.

The suit doesn’t name the supervisor. A copy of her employment contract, included as an exhibit with the filing, says she was to report to Matthew Peiken. He is a former Pioneer Press reporter whose online resume says he was a Patch regional editor from November 2010 to March 2012.

He is now an arts reporter for a television station in Cincinnati. He did not immediately return a call for comment.

A spokesperson for AOL and Patch did not immediately respond to a request for comment. Similarly, Stefanie Briggs, listed as the editor of Patch’s Golden Valley website, did not respond to an email seeking comment.

Vandergrift’s lawyer, Anne Greenwood Brown of Woodbury, did not immediately return a call for comment.

Patch is an online news site founded in 2007 and acquired by AOL in 2009. It was formed with the aim of giving readers “hyperlocal” news that daily and weekly newspapers and broadcast outlets sometimes don’t cover.

The business has never been profitable. On Aug. 16, AOL cut nearly 500 positions from Patch — almost half its workforce — and it closed some offices and consolidated others.

After the cuts, Patch’s associate regional editor for Minnesota told staffers that unless AOL found partners for 13 of the state’s 25 Patch sites, those editions would close within two months.

Golden Valley’s Patch operation is one of those on the cutting block.

Vandergrift, 36, of Minneapolis was a part-time weekend assignment editor, Web producer and reporter for KMSP-TV when, in September 2010, she says she was contacted by Patch and asked to be a full-time freelance journalist.

The woman says she told Patch she had Crohn’s, an inflammatory bowel disease with symptoms that include diarrhea, vomiting and abdominal pain. There is no cure, but some symptoms can be managed.

The suit says that near the end of December 2010, Patch offered Vandergrift a job at $45,000 a year, plus a $1,000 signing bonus and an annual bonus of 7.5 percent of her base salary “if both her and Patch’s overall annual performance was satisfactory,” the suit says.

Patch flew Vandergrift to New York City for training Jan. 9, 2011. On Jan. 11, after she had returned to the Twin Cities, she went to the hospital with severe stomach pains. The suit says that while in the emergency room, she called her bosses to tell them that she’d gotten a virus while in New York and that she was pregnant.

“Defendant’s response was to ask if she had brought her laptop with her so she could work from her hospital bed,” the suit claims.

The lawsuit says she spent three days in the hospital “and, contrary to doctor orders to rest and recuperate, spent her time completing defendant’s online training sessions, participating in conference calls, calling new freelancers” and learning how to use Patch’s software.

She said a medical specialist told her to stop working.

“Plaintiff called her direct supervisor to let him know, and his response was to ask if that was an ‘order’ or just a ‘suggestion’ because plaintiff was ‘management material’ and he wanted to know if she was able to work in a ‘supervisory position,’ ” the suit claims.

Although she was still sick, she returned to full-time work Jan. 17, 2011, but within days, her bosses rebuffed her complaints of fatigue, telling her she should “keep plugging along” and “continue to ‘pump out as much content as the other editors,’ ” the suit says.

Visits to the emergency room followed, and Vandergrift was given a short-term disability leave, but her superiors required her to keep working, the complaint alleges. She returned from the leave Feb. 22, 2011.

She claims that the “constant pain and stress” resulted in her pregnancy being deemed “high risk,” and that her doctors told her she needed to make weekly visits to the Mayo Clinic in Rochester during the last trimester.

Vandergrift says that when she told her boss, “his response was that he did not agree with her doctors, that there were plenty of good doctors in the Twin Cities, and that there was no need for her to go to Mayo.”

She says the company rejected her suggestions for “reasonable accommodations” for her condition. Then, in May 2011, her boss told her he’d gotten approval to hire an associate regional editor, a position she says she’d been promised when she was hired.

She applied and didn’t get the job. “Plaintiff’s supervisor specifically told her that she did not get the job because of her disability and because she was pregnant,” the lawsuit contends.

Things came to a head May 22, 2011, the day a tornado ripped through North Minneapolis, a block from where Vandergrift lived. She was eight months’ pregnant and had been to the emergency room for severe pain that morning. The tornado hit moments after she got home.

Her boss told her to take photographs of the storm-damaged neighborhoods, the suit says.

“Plaintiff asked if anyone else could cover it because cars could not get through and she would have to walk for blocks,” the suit says. “Her supervisor told her that she had to cover it or else be in jeopardy of losing her job — but to take comfort in the fact that the adrenaline rush would likely make her feel better.”

She spent five hours in the neighborhood. The following morning, she went to the emergency room “exhausted and in pain,” the suit says.

Vandergrift gave birth to her daughter July 5, 2011, and she began a six-week parenting leave.

“Within four to five hours of delivering, defendant emailed plaintiff to congratulate her and simultaneously ask her to work from her hospital bed,” the suit says.

She says she was later told she had earned an annual bonus of $3,375 for 2011 but was then told she wouldn’t get it because she had been granted a leave under the Family and Medical Leave Act for 2012.

Patch’s failure to provide accommodation for Vandergrift’s disability “resulted in her constructive discharge on or about March 11, 2012,” the suit says.

David Hanners can be reached at 612-338-6516.