July: A Busy Month for the EEOC as Agency Battles Employment Discrimination Around the Country
The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) is the federal agency tasked with enforcement of the nation’s employment discrimination laws, including Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, the Pregnancy Discrimination Act, the Equal Pay Act, the Age Discrimination in Employment Act (ADEA), Title I of the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA), and many more. The EEOC spends its day investigating complaints, filing charges, settling charges through a process known as conciliation, filing lawsuits against employers, and issuing “right to sue” letters to aggrieved employees, enabling them to pursue legal action against the companies that wronged them.
The EEOC is a busy agency, with a headquarters in Washington, D.C., and 53 field offices around the country processing about 80,000 job discrimination complaints each year. July was a particularly productive month for the agency, with well over $4 million assessed against employers nationwide guilty of sexual harassment, retaliation, age discrimination, religious discrimination, race discrimination, disability discrimination and more.
Below we highlight some of these July successes for the EEOC. Despite its vast resources, the EEOC can’t take on every complaint, which is why it issues the critical “right to sue” letter to employees in many instances. If you are facing employment discrimination in Marion or Citrus County, Florida, contact James P. Tarquin, P.A., for a free consultation with our experienced and successful Ocala employment lawyers.
Disability Discrimination and Retaliation: $1 Million-plus
On July 1, EEOC announced that Didlake, Inc. agreed to pay $1,017,500 to settle a lawsuit alleging unlawful disability discrimination and retaliation under the ADA. The nonprofit government contractor provides janitorial and maintenance workers to federal workers in D.C., Maryland and Virginia, including many employees with disabilities. Didlake, however, refused to provide accommodations to deaf and hard-of-hearing employees and had a policy of firing employees who requested medical leave but did not qualify for leave under the Family and Medical Leave Act (FMLA).
Race Discrimination: $30,000
On July 15, the agency issued a press release covering a settlement with Beaumont Health (now Corewell Health). The EEOC had sued the Dearborn, Michigan healthcare system for firing a Black home health aide in violation of Title VII. The worker was allegedly involved in a verbal conflict with a white co-worker, but rather than follow the company’s progressive discipline policy in issuing a reprimand to the employees, the company chose to fire the black employee (after 20 years on the job) without disciplining the white employee in any way.
Sexual Harassment and Retaliation: $172,000
On July 16, EEOC revealed it had reached a settlement through its conciliation process whereby horticultural grower Altman Speciality Plants, LLC, will pay $172,000 to resolve a finding the company engaged in sex discrimination and retaliation. The agency found that a supervisor at the company’s Austin, Texas, location subjected female employees to sexual harassment and a hostile work environment for an “extensive period.” Employees who complained were retaliated against, compounding the company’s Title VII violations.
Age Discrimination and Retaliation: $295,000
Also on July 16, national discount retailer Dollar General stores agreed to pay $295,000 to settle federal charges that the company harassed older managers and fired workers who reported the harassment for twin violations of the ADEA. The company’s Oklahoma regional director referred to district managers in their 50s and older as “grumpy old men.” The regional director was also quoted as saying he was building “a millennial team” to get “young blood” into the stores, and the older managers had better keep up with the “millennial team” or face the choice to quit or be fired. The ADEA prohibits discrimination based on age against people who are 40 or over, including age-based harassment and firing older workers to replace them with younger ones.
Religious Discrimination: $110,000
The agency announced on July 18th that the nationwide furniture retailer Hank’s Furniture agreed to pay $110,000 to settle charges the company failed to accommodate an employee’s sincerely held religious beliefs and instead fired her in violation of Title VII. As described in the lawsuit EEOC filed against Hank’s, a former assistant manager at the company’s location in Pensacola, Florida, had informed her employer that her religious beliefs prevented her from receiving a COVID-19 vaccine. The company’s response was to ignore her accommodation requests, question the sincerity of her beliefs, and terminate her when what it should have done was enter into a good-faith, interactive process to discuss ways to reasonably accommodate her religious beliefs.
Age Discrimination: $500,000
Another age discrimination lawsuit, this one settled on July 19th, alleged that the New Jersey branch vice president of commercial electrical contractor Hatzel & Buehler, Inc. engaged in a yearslong pattern of discriminatory recruiting and hiring practices by directing recruiting companies to look for younger candidates to fill certain positions, even going so far as refusing to hire older workers who did not fall into the age range he desired. To settle the charges related to this blatant discrimination, the company will pay $500,000 in monetary relief to eight older job candidates who were victimized by the VP’s conduct.
Sexual Harassment: $500,000
EEOC rounded out the month on July 25th with yet another half-million-dollar settlement, this one involving sexual harassment and retaliation of female farmworkers by a staffing agency. The lawsuit was brought on behalf of a class of female agricultural workers against Real Time Staffing Services, LLC, doing business as Select Staffing, in Fresno, California. A related class lawsuit against National Raisin recently settled for $2 million. That case also involved female workers placed by Select Staffing at a production facility where they were subjected to a hostile work environment combined with retaliation for speaking up. Select Staffing, providing onsite supervision at the facility, failed to take appropriate action after receiving complaints, in violation of Title VII.
Marion County Employment Discrimination Lawyers
The money recovered by the EEOC goes in large part to the aggrieved workers in the form of back pay and other compensation. In addition, the companies are also ordered to undergo other activities, such as revising policies and providing training under federal oversight for a period of years. Based in Ocala, Florida, and representing workers throughout Florida, our Marion County employment discrimination attorneys have aggressively litigated employment discrimination cases in Florida courts for more than twenty years. If you have been unlawfully discriminated against at work or have questions about your protection from employment discrimination in the workplace, please contact our office for a free consultation with our employment discrimination lawyers in Marion County, Florida. Our employee rights law firm takes sexual harassment cases on a contingency fee basis. This means that there are no attorney’s fees incurred unless there is a recovery and our attorney’s fees come solely from the monetary award that you recover.