Denver, Colorado-based Mile Hi Foods agreed to pay $1.5 million to resolve a U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission discrimination lawsuit alleging that its CEO and other company executives engaged in unfair hiring practices, per a consent decree filed Friday.
According to the original complaint filed in 2024, executives at Mile Hi had allegedly engaged in unlawful employment practices on the basis of sex, race, color, national origin and retaliation since 2015.
Mile Hi denies any liability for the claims and said in the decree that it is entering into the agreement “solely for the purposes of avoiding future litigation costs, expenses and disruptions.”
EEOC alleged that Mile Hi refused to employ women for warehouse and driving positions based on their gender; denied employment to Black and/or African American applicants because of their race and/or color; and denied employment to Afghan applicants for positions in the bakery based on their national origin.
Per the lawsuit, Mile Hi’s discriminatory directives “included a handwritten note from the CEO to not hire beyond a certain number of Black applicants because he believed that Black employees are ‘lazy’ and quit after a few days, instructions to not hire women for warehouse jobs because he believed that women were not effective at manual labor and would distract other male workers, and directions to stop hiring Afghan applicants for bakery jobs because he believed that there were too many ‘Afghanistans’ employed in the Bakery.”
In addition, the complaint alleged that when the HR manager opposed these practices, Mile Hi unlawfully retaliated by harassing and ultimately discharging her.
Per the terms of the settlement, Mile Hi will pay the HR manager and her attorney $600,000. The women, Black, African American and Afghan individuals in the case will receive the remaining $900,000, apportioned between backpay and compensatory damages.
Mile Hi will also be required to hire an outside vendor consultant, approved by EEOC, who will review the company’s employee handbook, EEO policies and anti-retaliation policies, and revise said policies to conform to the law, if needed. The consultant will also be tasked with annually auditing Mile Hi’s compliance practices for the duration of the decree.
The company will also be responsible for implementing a comprehensive annual training program related to Title VII of the Civil Rights Act’s anti-discrimination and anti-retaliation practices. HR, supervisory and managerial personnel will be required to spend a minimum of three hours each year being trained on specific Title VII prohibitions as well as requirements for recordkeeping and the handling of complaints. For executives at Mile Hi, this training will last four hours and will additionally include the company’s obligations under the consent decree.
The settlement also outlined procedures for notice posting and reporting provisions.
When HR and talent professionals bring up issues of discrimination, especially, the risk of not addressing complaints can be high. In a recent lawsuit, a diversity, equity and inclusion professional in Philadelphia alleged that she was retaliated against and eventually terminated after after reporting the sexual harassment; that case is still pending.
Meanwhile, a former HR manager in Wisconsin was allowed to proceed with her sex discrimination and retaliation lawsuit after she alleged that she was terminated for surfacing harassment and bias complaints, including her own.
However, legal experts have told HR Dive that proceeding with investigations of harassment claims after they have been ignored by leadership demands an understanding of both the personal and organizational risks. It also means keeping extensive records, developing a solid intake process and exercising discretion, especially if there are legal concerns, experts said.