Dive Brief:
- An Arkansas jury on Friday awarded a male surgical technician formerly employed by Northwest Medical Center-Bentonville $105,000 in compensatory and punitive damages for sex-based discrimination, court documents show (Equal Employment Opportunity Commission v. Northwest Arkansas Hospitals, LLC).
- According to the most recent complaint filed by EEOC in April 2025, two female obstetricians in the labor and delivery department refused to allow the technician to perform his duties — including setting up for delivery, placing fetal monitors, cleaning the area, bathing babies, assisting during deliveries and more — solely due to his sex and because they wanted to work with women. The lack of opportunity eventually forced him to quit, EEOC alleged.
- The case is among the latest in EEOC lawsuits on behalf of a majority-group plaintiff, although notably, it was first filed in September 2024, during the Biden administration.
Dive Insight:
The jury found that NMC-Bentonville violated Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which prohibits discriminating against any individual with respect to the terms, conditions or privileges of employment based on protected characteristics, like sex, race, religion, ethnicity or national origin.
In its verdict form, the jury found the hospital could not prove it would have subjected the technician to the same treatment regardless of his sex.
After one doctor complained to the director of women’s services about her hiring a male technician, the director realized the doctors’ refusal to work with the technician could constitute discrimination, according to EEOC’s complaint. EEOC said complaints escalated all the way to the CEO, and yet the discrimination continued.
“Federal law affords all workers, male and female, the right to work in a discrimination-free environment,” Faye Williams, regional attorney for EEOC’s Memphis district, said in a statement.
Sex discrimination against men has been a hot topic in the legal sphere over the past few years, alongside rising “reverse discrimination” claims more broadly. In February, EEOC obtained a $1.1 million settlement from the Southern restaurant group that owns Kickback Jack’s, for refusing to hire male servers. That settlement also arose from a Biden-era lawsuit.
EEOC Chair Andrea Lucas solicited claims from White men specifically last December, attracting the attention of management-side attorneys and members of Congress. She defended the appeal in May at the Fortune Workplace Summit, arguing the agency is “widening” the aperture on civil rights claims and that no settlement over the past 10 years addressed discrimination faced by White men.
That run may soon change, as EEOC filed a lawsuit against The New York Times earlier that same month, alleging the media giant refused to promote a White male journalist based on his race and sex. The Times has pushed back, however, alleging the lawsuit amounts to retaliation in response to the publication’s coverage of the Trump administration.
In 2022, at the time the EEOC’s allegations against the Arkansas hospital system took place, the hospital was owned by Community Health Systems, Inc., which was based in Franklin, Tennessee, according to EEOC. Freeman Health System, which acquired Northwest Medical Center-Bentonville in June, did not respond to a request for comment by press time.
