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The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) has filed a lawsuit against Chipotle over accusations of religious harassment at a Kansas restaurant.
The suit, initiated on Wednesday, centers around a 2021 incident where an assistant manager at the Lenexa, Kansas, Chipotle location allegedly persistently harassed a 19-year-old Muslim employee, urging her to reveal her hair by removing her hijab.
The complaint details that the manager, over a span of a month, made over ten such requests. The situation escalated when the manager purportedly “reached out and pulled her hijab partially off her head.” Despite her complaints to another supervisor, no significant action was taken. Following this incident, the employee handed in her two-week resignation, yet she wasn’t assigned any shifts during this period, a deviation from Chipotle’s usual practice, the complaint points out.
Chipotle’s chief corporate affairs officer, Laurie Schalow, commented, “We have a zero-tolerance policy for discrimination of any kind and we have terminated the employee in question.”
What the lawsuit is seeking:
The EEOC’s lawsuit seeks the introduction of policies at Chipotle ensuring equal employment opportunities for all religious groups and compensation for the affected employee, alleging the company violated federal civil rights law.