Dive Brief:
- Ollie’s Bargain Discount unlawfully discriminated against a deaf applicant, the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission alleged in a lawsuit filed Wednesday. The agency claimed Ollie’s violated the Americans with Disabilities Act, as well as the Civil Rights Act of 1991.
- According to the complaint, the charging party applied for four different Ollie’s warehouse positions in Lancaster, Texas, in May 2025. Despite being able to perform all essential functions of the job and having prior warehouse experience, Ollie’s never interviewed the charging party for any of the positions. Around the same time, Ollie’s hired numerous nondeaf people for the same warehouse positions, including people with minimal to no warehouse experience.
- Ollie’s specifically didn’t hire the deaf job applicant because it required “the ability to hear regularly” as a physical qualification, according to EEOC’s investigation. This lawsuit is one of several cases this year regarding discrimination against deaf talent.
Dive Insight:
EEOC has made discrimination against deaf and hard of hearing workers an area of focus in recent years, updating a guidance on the topic in 2023. This form of bias has remained a bipartisan area of interest as administrations have changed hands.
After Smiths Detection, Inc., allegedly denied a hard-of-hearing worker a hearing protection device, for instance, the manufacturer agreed to pay $100,000 to end an EEOC lawsuit. Shortly after this settlement, Walmart agreed to pay $230,000 to settle an EEOC lawsuit alleging that the retailer refused to accommodate a deaf job applicant who requested an American Sign Language interpreter during the interview process.
EEOC previously brought charges against a staffing agency that places workers with disabilities in 2021, alleging that the firm “routinely refused” deaf workers ASL interpreters. Similarly, the U.S. Air Force faced claims of workplace discrimination, with a class of workers alleging the branch of the military denied workers interpreters and videophones, among other accommodations.
Attitudes toward deaf people in the workplace may foster a lack of inclusion. Previously, only 30% of survey respondents told Communication Service for the Deaf that they felt a deaf person could “absolutely” perform their job equally as well or better. EEOC Dallas District Office Director Travis Nicholson acknowledged the harm this baseline ableism can cause in his statement on Wednesday.
“Unfortunately, deaf and hearing-impaired workers continue to face needless discriminatory barriers to full and equal participation in our nation’s economy. Some employers rely on stereotypes, myths and unfounded fears about deaf workers and their disabilities rather than accurate, individualized information about their abilities — leading to erroneous conclusions that those workers are unable to perform essential job requirements,” Nicholson said.
Likewise, EEOC Dallas District Regional Attorney Ronald Phillips acknowledged the legal frameworks that help workers with disabilities participate in the workforce. Phillips noted that Sept. 25 marks the 18th anniversary of the ADA Amendments Act of 2008, which clarified the ADA’s protections for disabled workers.
“Those amendments to the ADA have produced progress in disability rights, but much more remains to be done to fulfill the statute’s stated goal of ensuring that disabled workers have ‘the opportunity to compete on an equal basis and to pursue those opportunities for which our free society is justifiably famous,’” Phillips said.
HR Dive reached out to Ollie’s for comment and did not hear back by the time of publication.