Retired Major League Baseball Star Herb Washington, 69, filed a lawsuit against McDonald's in Ohio last week for alleged racist policies and discrimination. In his case, the former baseball celebrity accused McDonald's of “racial discrimination and retaliation” in his long-time franchisee partnership with the global fast-food giant.
The defendant, McDonald’s Corporation, is a publicly-traded Delaware corporation and is a wholly-owned subsidiary limited liability company that is the franchisor of McDonald’s restaurants in the United States.
Throughout his franchisee career, Washington has owned twenty-seven McDonalds located in Ohio, Pennsylvania, and New York. His over forty years’ ownership of numerous franchises placed him as the number one black-owned franchise in the US. Currently, Washington owns fourteen McDonalds franchises.
Court papers show Washington accuses McDonald's of "racial discrimination and retaliation against him as a Black franchisee.”
The fifty-page complaint was filed in the US District Court for the Northern District of Ohio Eastern Division, claiming, "In his four decades in the McDonald's system, Mr. Washington has suffered deplorable treatment as compared with White franchisees.”
Washington said the multi-billion dollar fast food chain forced him to sell numerous McDonald’s locations to white franchise owners.
One example cited by the plaintiff in court documents states, “McDonald’s purposefully steered Mr. Washington into stores in distressed, predominantly Black neighborhoods, which—as McDonald’s well knew— yield considerably less profit than stores in more affluent communities.”
When Washington protested to cooperate headquarters about alleged discriminatory practices by McDonald's toward black franchise owners, he was told: "sit down and be quiet.” It was after this meeting, Washington alleges, that McDonald’s began to discriminate against him.
The lawsuit claims the proof is clear - that racism against black-owned franchises can be seen in the numbers of black versus white-owned stores.
“Indeed, from the time McDonald’s admitted its discriminatory racial steering policy, the profitability gap between White and Black franchisees has grown, and Black franchise ownership has plummeted,” the court documents state. “Redlining Black franchisees into largely low-volume stores in impoverished communities, McDonald’s has consistently discriminated against Black franchisees. Black owners average around $700,000 less in annual sales per store than White owners. This is not a coincidence. Nor is it because Black franchisees are comparatively worse at running businesses. The precipitous decline in Black franchisees and persistent disparity in cash flow are the direct and proximate result of McDonald’s ongoing policies of racially disparate treatment.”
The McDonald's allegations include numerous racist actions. Washington alleges he was forced to sell stores to white franchisees, subjecting him to “unfair grading and assessments designed to rend him ineligible to continue to operate his restaurants." He said McDonald's demanded him to make “massive capital investments” at the very same time McDonald's was trying to curtail his ownership and more
In September 2020, over fifty former black-owned franchises alleged similar racist practices in a lawsuit against McDonald's, claiming they were forced out of their two-hundred-plus restaurants over the past decade by the company.
McDonald’s denied the allegations in a statement Tuesday, saying Washington’s business problems resulted from his failure to “meet many of our standards on people, operations, guest satisfaction, and reinvestment” and that Washington had a “litany of violations” from the health department.
