A Texas-based logistics company will pay half a million dollars to resolve federal claims that it rejected female job applicants because of their sex, the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission announced Tuesday.
EEOC claimed that, since 2020, Birchstone Management declined to hire women as pallet repairers at facilities in several states, instead hiring men with similar or fewer qualifications. One affected applicant, who filed a discrimination charge with EEOC and was quoted in the agency’s press release, said she was told that Birchstone “only hires men.”
EEOC also tagged the company for allegedly failing to maintain required employment records.
The agreement, reached via the commission’s conciliation process, will provide $55,000 to the charging party and $445,000 toward a class settlement fund for other potentially affected female applicants. Birchstone also agreed to appoint an HR professional to revise its recruitment and hiring policies and conduct training, among other relief.
“I hope this case helps employers stop labeling jobs as ‘women’s work’ or ‘men’s work,’” the applicant quoted in EEOC’s release said. “Everyone deserves a fair chance to show what they can do.”
Other employers have faced EEOC in court over claims they excluded female applicants in the hiring process. In July, an Alabama recycling company paid $2.6 million to resolve the agency’s lawsuit alleging that it maintained a “long-standing pattern” of hiring only male laborers.
The commission has particularly targeted cases in which women are excluded from performing certain roles because of their sex. In 2025, at least two such lawsuits resulted in million-dollar settlements.
The first involved allegations that a security solutions firm placed male-only hiring instructions within its HR database for certain security officer roles. In the second, EEOC claimed that a machining company not only denied production jobs to a class of female applicants, but also retaliated against an HR director for hiring female project managers.
These and other lawsuits challenging sex-based discrimination demonstrate EEOC’s commitment to enforcement — as well as the potential dangers of pulling back from diversity, equity and inclusion policies intended to prevent such discrimination, one researcher previously wrote in an opinion piece for HR Dive.