A woman has filed a discrimination lawsuit against the Pittsburgh chapter of the American Jewish Committee, claiming she was fired because she's not Jewish.

Regitze W. Weingartner, 65, filed the claim in federal court yesterday, alleging religious and age discrimination. She is seeking back pay and wages, lost future earnings and punitive damages.

Mrs. Weingartner began working for the nonprofit organization in January 1994 as a secretary. She claims in her lawsuit that she always had strong performance evaluations and got along well with two different supervisors.

When new area director Lisa Steindel became her boss in August 2005, Mrs. Weingartner said, Ms. Steindel immediately began to subject her to "loud and angry criticism."

"Ms. Steindel's criticism was not the result of an honest evaluation of Mrs. Weingartner's performance," the lawsuit contends. "Rather, it was driven by Ms. Steindel's bias against non-Jews such as Mrs. Weingartner."

She alleges that on Oct. 24, 2005, Ms. Steindel referred to Mrs. Weingartner as a "shiksa," a derogatory term used to describe a non-Jewish woman.

Ms. Steindel put Mrs. Weingartner on probation in November 2005, according to the lawsuit, and she was fired a month later.