Civil Rights Lawsuit Claims Carolina McDonald’s Restaurant Refuses to Hire Minorities

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The operating companies of a McDonald’s restaurant in Conway, South Carolina are facing a proposed class action lawsuit after allegedly instructing a store manager to only hire Caucasian employees. The manager, one of the named plaintiffs, says she was responsible for staffing the restaurant and sought to hire the most qualified individuals to work at her store. According to the suit, she was repeatedly chastised by the individual store owner, the area supervisor, and the director of operations – who are also named as defendants in the lawsuit – for not keeping her restaurant “in balance,” or in other words, for hiring minorities. The defendants effectively instructed the woman to reject applicants whose names were “black-sounding” or “minority-sounding,” the lawsuit attests, including the other named plaintiff in the case, who had applied for a job at the store and allegedly was rejected based on her race.

The case claims the defendants concerned themselves with maintaining “demographics,” which the manager plaintiff says was the term they used to justify their alleged policy of favoring Caucasian job applicants. The woman claims she repeatedly objected to the policy and was “reprimanded” for her refusal to comply with what she deemed an illegal hiring practice. As a consequence of her objections, the defendants allegedly retaliated against her by scheduling her for “extended shifts” and requiring her to work on days she had requested off or had called in sick. The woman then began suffering physically due to the stress of her situation, the lawsuit continues, and experienced anxiety, emotional distress, migraines, and elevated blood pressure.

Finally, the case alleges, after the defendants conducted a “sham” investigation of the manager’s complaints and concluded that their policies were not discriminatory, the woman “was left with no choice but to resign” and ended her employment on November 21, 2017.