Dive Brief:
- LeoPalace Resort, a major hotel and resort in Guam, agreed to pay more than $1.4 million to settle allegations the company provided non-Japanese employees, including workers of American national origin, with less favorable wages, benefits and terms of employment than workers from Japan in similar or subordinate positions, the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission announced Tuesday.
- The lawsuit, EEOC v. LeoPalace Guam Corp., is the first EEOC has publicized since President Donald Trump took office and fired the commission’s chair, a commissioner and its general counsel, shaking up the make up of the agency. The settlement was announced a day before new EEOC Acting Chair Andrea Lucas vowed to protect U.S. workers from anti-American bias.
- EEOC alleged LeoPalace Resort violated Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which protects workers against employment discrimination based on national origin. Under the consent decree, LeoPalace Resort also will hire an external monitor to oversee compliance and training, review policies and procedures, conduct audits for EEOC and potentially reinstate former employees.
Dive Insight:
Lucas said on Wednesday that EEOC is putting employers “on notice.”
“[I]f you are part of the pipeline contributing to our immigration crisis or abusing our legal immigration system via illegal preferences against American workers, you must stop. The law applies to you, and you are not above the law. The EEOC is here to protect all workers from unlawful national origin discrimination, including American workers,” Lucas said.
EEOC said that while Title VII’s national origin nondiscrimination requirement typically means companies can’t prefer American workers, “it equally means that employers cannot prefer non-American workers and disfavor Americans.”
Lucas similarly identified anti-American national origin discrimination as one of her priorities when she was tapped to lead EEOC. She has served as an EEOC commissioner since 2020 and was appointed acting chair in January after Trump took office.
Lucas also said she plans to focus on “rooting out unlawful DEI-motivated race and sex discrimination” and “defending the biological and binary reality of sex and related rights.”
