Chipotle will settle a lawsuit with a Muslim employee who said a manager harassed her and forcibly removed her hijab at one of the company’s Lenexa restaurants in 2021.
On April 1, the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission announced the national restaurant chain Chipotle Services, Inc. will pay $20,000 and provide other relief, like training workers on religious discrimination and harassment, to settle a religious discrimination lawsuit with the woman, who was a teenager at the time she worked at the Lenexa franchise.
Filed in U.S. District Court in Kansas City, Kansas, by the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, the lawsuit claimed the woman was deprived of her rights and faced retaliation when she complained about her manager’s behavior.
The incidents occurred in 2021
The employee, who was 19 at the time, worked as a line server at the Chipotle Mexican Grill Restaurant in Sonoma Plaza on West 87th Street Parkway east of Interstate 435.
Over a two-month period, she said an assistant manager asked multiple times to see her hair under her hijab.
After she refused multiple times, the manager forcibly pulled the hijab off her head, she told the Post in an interview at the time.
The woman then filed a police report, accusing the manager of assault and battery. She said her cousin, who worked with her at the same Chipotle, experienced similar harassment.
Shortly after the incident, the woman submitted her two weeks notice. In retaliation for her complaint, Chipotle refused to schedule the employee during the duration of that notice, according to the EEOC lawsuit.
EEOC said Chipotle violated employee’s civil rights
Following the incident, the Kansas chapter of the Council on American-Islamic Relations, or CAIR-Kansas, provided support for the employee and filed a complaint on behalf of her with the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission.
The manager’s alleged conduct violated Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which prohibits workplace harassment based on religion as well as retaliation for complaints of religious harassment, the EEOC stated in its lawsuit.
After CAIR-Kansas filed its complaint, Chipotle confirmed it had fired the manager at the center of the alleged harassment, and a company spokeswoman said Chipotle had a “zero tolerance policy for discrimination of any kind.”
The settlement will require more training for Chipotle employees
In addition to compensating the woman, the settlement requires Chipotle to train line employees in Lenexa three times a year on harassment and religious discrimination.
It also requires Chipotle to regularly train personnel in a supervisor position about Title VII provisions and religious discrimination.
The company must also report any complaints of religious harassment to the EEOC.
In a press release, attorneys from the EEOC celebrated the settlement and the precedent it sets.
“No one should be harassed at work because of their religious beliefs or practices, and employers must not permit their employees — especially their supervisors — to ridicule or assault workers because of their most deeply held personal beliefs,” Andrea G. Baran, regional attorney for the EEOC’s St. Louis District Office, said in the press release. “This decree will ensure Chipotle’s employees, whatever their religion, enjoy the law’s protection.”
Requests for comment from Chipotle Services, Inc., by the Johnson County Post were not returned.
Read more about the case: Lenexa Police investigating allegation that Chipotle manager pulled off employee’s hijab
