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January 19, 2024
On January 11, 2024, the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) announced that Walmart will pay $60,000 and provide other relief[1] to settle a sex discrimination lawsuit.
In its lawsuit,[2] the EEOC alleged that Walmart refused to promote an employee to a position as department manager in its Ottumwa, Iowa store based on sex stereotypes about women with young children. Specifically, when the employee asked why she was passed over for the promotion, a store official allegedly told her that, because she had young children, store management assumed that she was not interested in advancing her career at Walmart long-term. Instead, Walmart promoted a woman who had no children.[3]
Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 prohibits sex discrimination, which includes discrimination based on sex stereotypes. As the court in this case noted in response to Walmart’s motion to end the case before trial, the “pervasive presumption that women are mothers first, and workers second is among the sex stereotypes that Congress has explicitly identified as impermissible.”
Employers: Gregory Gochanour, the regional attorney for the EEOC’s Chicago District Office, said it best when commenting about the settlement: “Women with children deserve the opportunity to be judged fairly in the workplace based on their qualifications and abilities, not on assumptions about their commitment to their careers.”
If you need assistance to train your managers about employment laws, including those laws addressing sex discrimination, contact us, because, if your managers engage in sex stereotypes when making employment decisions, you’re going to have a “mother” of a problem on your hands.
This newsletter is designed to provide one perspective regarding recent legal developments, and is not intended to serve as legal advice, nor does it establish an attorney-client relationship with any reader of the article where one does not exist. Always consult an attorney with specific legal issues.
[1] In addition to paying $60,000 in compensation to the now-former employee, Walmart will provide training to relevant management employees on federal laws prohibiting sex discrimination and will report complaints of sex discrimination in promotions to the EEOC.
[2] EEOC v. Walmart, et al., Civ. Action No. 4:22-cv-00037-SMR-SBJ (S.D. Iowa).
[3] In defense, Walmart argued that this alleged statement from a store official was impermissible hearsay (an out-of-court statement offered to prove the truth of the matter). Walmart further argued, among other things, that the promotion-seeking employee was not the best candidate for the job, that “having small children” is not a protected class under the law, that the Walmart decision-maker was a woman who just had a baby herself (and, therefore, allegedly could not have engaged in sex-stereotyping about an employee with small children), and that the EEOC had not and could not point to any male employee with small children who was treated more favorably.
