Even though National Taco Day will be celebrated across the nation on October 4, Chipotle Mexican Grill, which has over 7,000 locations in the U.S. and 17 foreign countries, will have little to celebrate. The Newport Beach, California-based fast-food chain recently settled a sexual harassment lawsuit filed by the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) for $400,000, but the settlement is not the end of Chipotle’s legal worries. A Muslim teenager also sued the restaurant chain in September for religious discrimination.
The September 14 settlement arose from a lawsuit filed by the EEOC on behalf of three under-aged employees against a Chipotle restaurant in Sammamish, Washington. One worker was only 17. The workers claimed they were continually harassed by their 29-year-old manager and his 24-year-old co-worker. The women claimed they were assaulted, touched, and subjected to “unwelcome sexual comments and requests for sex from their bosses, who among other violations, trapped them in the restaurant’s walk-in refrigerator. The women said they repeatedly reported the incidents, but Chipotle management neither investigated the complaints nor instituted remedial measures.
This Washington lawsuit does not stand alone. On September 28, the EEOC filed suit on behalf of Chipotle employee Areej Saifan, who accused Kevin Silva Garcia, her assistant manager, of violating federal civil rights law after he harassed her for wearing a hijab at Chipotle’s Lenexa, Kansas, facility. Saifan, who was a 19-year-old line worker when the harassment began, was repeatedly asked to show Garcia her hair and continually asked to remove her hijab, a head covering worn by many Muslim women, beginning in July 2021. He made that request ten times.
The suit, Equal Opportunity Commission v. Chipotle Services, LLC, Civil Action No. 2-23-cv-02439 was filed in U.S. District Court for the District of Kansas. Saifan seeks monetary damages as well as an order against further religious discrimination.
Garcia continued to ask Saifan to show him her hair. She complained to management, but Garcia continued to “escalate his abuse,” by grabbing and forcibly removing, or “ripping off” part of her headscarf, according to an EEOC news release. Plaintiff Saifan also alleged that Chipotle retaliated against her after she gave two weeks’ notice.
The EEOC complaint said that the assistant manager’s propositions were “offensive and incessant requests” and that Garcia’s attempt to physically remove Saifan’s hijab was “unwelcome, intentional, severe, based on religion, and created a hostile working environment based on religion.” Saifan said she had complained to her shift manager, Kim Benevento-Fernandez, who allegedly told Garcia to stop asking to see Saifan’s hair, but, according to the complaint, “she took no further action.”
The lawsuit also explains that one day after Garcia’s headscarf was forcibly removed, she gave the restaurant her two weeks’ notice. After doing so, she claims that she was not scheduled for any shifts during that period, but was asked if she would like to transfer to a different restaurant location.
Then, ten days after Saifan resigned, assistant manager Garcia was fired. However, his termination had nothing to do with his alleged harassment of Saifan. Rather, according to the New York Times, he was fired for violating company policy for engaging in consensual romantic relations with Saifan’s shift manager, Benavente-Fernandez.
The EEOC’s suit said that the conduct of both managers and their supervisors violated Title VII of the Civil Rights Law of 1964 which prohibits all forms of discrimination, including harassment, based on religion, race, color, sex, or national origin. It also outlaws retaliation against those who complain.
The law defines religion as including “all aspects of observance and practice, as well as belief, unless an employer demonstrates that he is unable to reasonably accommodate an employee’s or prospective employee’s religious observance or practice without undue hardship on the conduct of the employer’s business.“
EEOC attorney Andrea G. Baran was quoted in the EEOC news release as saying, “People of faith have a right to work free from harassment based on their religious beliefs and practices. Harassment of women and teen girls who choose to express their religious beliefs by wearing modest clothing or head coverings is never acceptable.”
This attitude is reflected in the recently settled Washington case as well. The terms of that suit require the restaurant to appoint an “internal consent decree coordinator” who will review company policies and institute new ones that include sexual harassment training and procedures to assure that new policies are followed and that managers comply and are held accountable if they do not.
Chipotle’s chief corporate affairs and food safety officer Laurie Schalow told the New York Times that the company had a “zero tolerance policy” for discrimination of any kind and that they had “terminated the employee in question.” She said, “We encourage our employees to contact us immediately, including through an anonymous 800 number, with any concerns, so we can investigate and respond quickly to make things right.”
It does not appear that Chipotle will have a Happy Taco Day this week.
