Dive Brief:
- A cemetery and funeral management company discriminated against Black employees when it restricted their access to a restroom and break room otherwise accessible to White employees, the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission alleged in a Feb. 6 complaint.
- Per the complaint in EEOC v. StoneMor GP, LLC, et. al., Black employees at a Tennessee StoneMor facility had no access to an interior restroom or break room for a 10-day period and instead used a neighboring gas station’s restroom. After the employees complained to management, StoneMor provided access to a restroom and adjoining break room that the plaintiffs alleged was “inhospitable and unhygienic.”
- Meanwhile, the defendants allegedly refused to provide Black employees access to a “preferred restroom” open to White employees. EEOC also claimed the company unlawfully threatened to fire a supervisor who had informed StoneMor that one of his reports had asked to file a discrimination charge. The company did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Dive Insight:
The alleged conduct amounted to an unlawful denial of equal status in the workplace in violation of Title VII of the 1964 Civil Rights Act, EEOC claimed. In a press release, EEOC Acting General Counsel Catherine Eschbach said the act of segregating employees by race and accompanying retaliation “strike at the core of federal civil rights law.”
Much of the complaint against StoneMor centered on three Black groundskeeping employees who constituted the nonmanagerial staff at the Memphis-area facility. StoneMor restricted access to the preferred restroom and break room with a combination code lock, according to EEOC, and this restriction applied both to the groundskeeping plaintiffs as well as to Black employees in client-facing or professional positions.
At the same time, members of the facility’s executive management, all of whom were White, and professional-level White employees were granted access to the preferred restroom and break room, per the complaint.
The three employees repeatedly complained about the restrictions as well as the conditions of the alternate break room StoneMor gave them access to. StoneMor fired one of the employees, a supervisor, less than a week after an executive threatened to do so if his subordinate contacted EEOC, the agency claimed.
Retaliation has been a focus in several recent race discrimination cases pursued by EEOC. For example, the agency announced last July a settlement with a retirement community it alleged had refused to promote and later fired a Black manager who expressed her desire to file a discrimination charge.
