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- A Kansas Chipotle manager repeatedly asked a Muslim teenage worker to remove her hijab, the EEOC said
- This culminated in the manager "forcibly" pulling it off her head to see her hair, the EEOC said.
- The worker was forced to quit her job, the EEOC said in a lawsuit it filed against Chipotle.
A Chipotle manager in Kansas repeatedly asked a Muslim worker to remove her hijab and "forcibly" pulled it off her head when she refused to show him her hair, the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission says.
The company also retaliated against the worker after she complained, the EEOC claimed in a lawsuit, filed last Wednesday.
Chipotle didn't immediately respond to Insider's request for comment on the lawsuit, made outside of regular working hours.
The chain's chief corporate affairs officer told The Kansas City Star that Chipotle had a "zero tolerance policy for discrimination of any kind" and encouraged staff to report concerns so that they can be investigated.
The EEOC said in the lawsuit that an assistant manager at Chipotle's restaurant in Lenexa, eastern Kansas subjected the worker, a line server, to a "barrage of harassing conduct" which lasted for several weeks in summer 2021, based on her religion.
The assistant manager "continually" asked the worker, then 19, to remove her hijab and show him her hair despite her asking him to leave her alone, the EEOC wrote. He "demanded" to see her hair between 10 and 15 times in roughly one month, the lawsuit claimed.
The worker complained to another supervisor at the store about the conduct, who told the assistant manager to stop asking to see her hair but didn't take any further action such as reporting it to higher management, the EEOC wrote.
The harassment reached a peak when the assistant manager tried to forcibly remove the worker's hijab, according to the EEOC. In August 2021, when staff were closing down the restaurant, the assistant manager "reached out, grabbed her hijab, and yanked," the EEOC said. Part of the worker's hijab came off, "exposing her hair," the EEOC says.
The worker reported the incidents to the store manager and field manager, but they failed to address the harassment, the EEOC said. The worker quit that same month, which counted as constructive discharge, the EEOC said.
And after the worker gave in her two-weeks' notice, the company didn't schedule her for any new shifts during this time period, which goes against its usual practices and counted as retaliation, the EEOC wrote.
Chipotle told The Kansas City Star that it had terminated the assistant manager, but the EEOC said in the lawsuit that this was because he violated company policy by engaging in a consensual romantic relationship with another staff member, and not because of the apparent religious harassment.
The EEOC said that it had given Chipotle the opportunity to remedy the discriminatory practices and provide appropriate relief to the worker but that the company didn't provide a conciliation agreement that the Commission deemed acceptable, culminating in it filing the lawsuit.
The lawsuit asks for backpay and compensation for the worker, as well as punitive damages. It seeks a trial by jury.