Dive Brief:
- Battleground Restaurants and Battleground Restaurant Group, owners of the Kickback Jack’s brand, will pay $1,111,300 to settle allegations by the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission that the companies refused to hire men as servers, bartenders, hosts and other nonmanagerial front-of-house positions because of their sex, according to a Feb. 3 consent decree in EEOC v. Battleground Restaurants, Inc.
- The complaint, filed in September 2024 by the Biden administration, alleged these actions violated Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. According to the complaint, the companies operate 19 Kickback Jack’s restaurants in North Carolina, Virginia and Tennessee. Between December 2019 and February 2022, only about 3% of the more than 2,100 people employed in nonmanagerial, customer-facing positions were male, with some restaurants having no male servers at all, the lawsuit alleged.
- “Hiring must be based on merit — not sex — as Title VII requires,” EEOC Chair Andrea Lucas stated in a media release, adding the EEOC “will hold employers accountable when they deny applicants opportunities because of their sex, regardless of whether the aggrieved applicants are women or men.”
Dive Insight:
Notably, the consent decree made no findings on the merits of the allegations, and Battleground Restaurants and Battleground Restaurant Group denied any liability or that they failed to employ male applicants because of their sex, the document said. The companies did not respond to a request for comment.
The case offers key guidance for employers reckoning with the EEOC’s new priorities under the Trump administration. Relevant here, this includes the EEOC’s aggressive pursuit of bias claims by White male applicants and employees.
“Hiring managers should recognize the importance of merit, aptitude, hard work and determination when making employment decisions,” EEOC regional attorney Melinda Dugas stressed in the release.
“Whether sex-based hiring practices are overt, such as refusing to hire, or more subtle, such as steering or encouraging employees away from or into certain positions, they violate Title VII,” Dugas said.
As an example of how to avoid perceived bias, the consent decree requires that any promotional materials depicting one or more front-of-house employees must include at least one male server.
It also requires HR or other upper-level management to periodically review the Battleground companies’ hiring practices and decisions to ensure these practices don’t violate Title VII.
The $1.11 million payment will be put in a fund for a class of males who applied for nonmanagerial front-of-house positions at Kickback Jack’s restaurants during the relevant time period and were not selected because they are male, the consent decree said.