UPS Hit with Discrimination Lawsuit Over Alleged Refusal to Deliver Directly to Two Staten Island Apartment Complexes

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A proposed class action lawsuit against UPS alleges the company illegally refuses to deliver packages to two Staten Island, New York apartment complexes, forcing residents to travel up to a third of a mile, and only on specific days, to pick up their orders.

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The 20-page civil rights lawsuit says that although UPS delivers packages to individual apartment complexes throughout the borough and takes them inside each building, it does not provide the same service to the Fox Hill Apartments and Park Hill Apartments, where the majority of residents are non-white, and allegedly has not done so for the last 30 years. Per the suit, the alleged non-delivery policy is unique to UPS given that FedEx, DHL and Amazon all deliver directly to the Fox Hill and Park Hill Apartments, located on the northern edge of Staten Island.

The suit says that those who live in the more than 1,400 subsidized housing units that comprise the Fox Hill and Park Hill buildings are forced to “convene at one location” outside 240 Park Hill Avenue between 11:00 a.m. and 12:00 p.m. on delivery days to “wait for the UPS truck to arrive and pick up their packages from the truck.” The location of this pickup spot is prohibitively far for some elderly residents and those with disabilities, the case states, with residents of both buildings forced to accommodate UPS’s schedule and wait for the truck “outdoors, in an unprotected area, in rain, snow, heat, and cold—or miss their deliveries.”

Asking “[w]hat makes Park Hill and Fox Hill different,” the lawsuit says that the majority of residents in many Staten Island apartment buildings to which UPS does deliver are white, while only 1% of Fox Hill and Park Hill residents are white. Per the suit, of the other 99% of residents, “23.7% are Hispanic, 71.5% are Black Non-Hispanic, 0.5% are Asian Non-Hispanic, 2.6% are two or more races, and 0.8% fall into the category of ‘other’ races.”

“UPS’s Non-Delivery Policy discriminates against and adversely impacts the residents of Park Hill and Fox Hill, the vast majority of whom are non-White, by refusing to provide these residents the basic services that the residents of other similarly situated apartment buildings enjoy—services for which these residents have paid,” the suit alleges.

Per the complaint, UPS does not always arrive at the predetermined time for Fox Hill and Park Hill residents to obtain their packages. On some occasions, residents may have to wait, “sometimes for hours,” for the truck to arrive, or else risk missing their delivery, the case says. Other times, the UPS truck will come early, and residents might miss the delivery window altogether, the suit relays.

“If residents do miss their pickup window or are otherwise unable to pick up their UPS packages, after two attempts, UPS will send their packages to its facility in Travis, on the western edge of Staten Island. The facility is six miles away from Park Hill and Fox Hill, twenty-five minutes by car and an hour and ten minutes by bus.”

The case accuses UPS of violating the New York State Civil Rights Law and New York City Human Rights Law and asks the court to “compel UPS to provide the same service to Park Hill and Fox Hill that it provides to everyone else on Staten Island.”

The lawsuit contends that proposed class members are each entitled to between $100 and $500 in statutory damages for every instance of UPS failing to deliver a package to their building and instead requiring them to wait to meet the delivery truck.

The UPS discrimination lawsuit looks to cover all individuals who have lived in the Park Hill or Fox Hill apartments in the last three years and have been “adversely impacted by the UPS policy of Non-Delivery.”

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