Hooters: An Employment Law Nightmare

[Omaha Steve]

https://onlabor.org/hooters-an-employment-law-nightmare/

December 22, 2023

By Ellie Samuels

Ellie Samuels is a student at Harvard Law School and a member of the Labor and Employment Lab.

The path to the perfect Hooters Girl has been paved with discrimination. For forty years, Hooters’ image and brand has been singularly tied to its waitresses. These servers are almost always thin, pretty, young women. Though Hooters’ central menu item is its chicken wings, the majority of the restaurant’s website and branding surrounds not wings, but “Hooters Girls,” clad in their signature uniform (orange shorts and a low-cut white tank top). A company’s dependency on the sex appeal of waitresses necessitates fixating on attractiveness and desirability. This focus can and does devolve into racist stereotyping and sexually hostile work environments. Wealthy corporations get away with a lot, and Hooters is no exception. By pricing in illegal discrimination, the company avoids accountability, while inadvertently revealing the limits of contemporary employment law.

Making a Hooters Girl

For decades, the Hooters franchise has been under scrutiny for discrimination claims. In 1997, a group of men sued Hooters for its practice of hiring exclusively female servers. The restaurant asserted that being female was a Bona Fide Occupational Qualification (BFOQ), an exception to Title VII that allows for sex discrimination based on business necessity. BFOQ arguments frequently arise in the entertainment industry, and have been interpreted narrowly. The crux of the company’s argument was that Hooters waitresses are not merely waitresses, but entertainers, inextricable from the Hooters business model and image. The restaurant ultimately settled with the men for $3.75 million, skirting a court ruling on the issue. As part of the settlement, however, Hooters agreed to create more non-server positions for men.

In intervening decades, Hooters has been accused of engaging in nearly every known type of employment discrimination. They have settled numerous sexual harassment suits. One employee sued a Detroit Hooters in 2010 for weight discrimination under Michigan law; the case was resolved through arbitration. In 2015 Hooters settled for $250,000 with a waitress prohibited from wearing blonde highlights (her manager claimed that the highlights would not look “natural” on her as a Black woman). In August 2023, the EEOC filed suit against a North Carolina Hooters, alleging that after pandemic layoffs, the restaurant failed to rehire only their Black and dark-skinned waitresses. Even before the failure to recall, managers suggested that light skin-toned servers were “more presentable” and made racist comments about Black workers’ appearances. A month later, a Hooters in Louisiana settled a nearly identical racial discrimination suit for $650,000.

Hooters is not the only restaurant of its kind. Hooters competitor Twin Peaks was sued in federal court in 2020 for sexual harassment, with allegations that waitresses were lined up, graded on their bodies, then assigned restaurant sections based on their scores. Servers attested to being placed on “fat probation” and experiencing racist and homophobic harassment. The case settled for an undisclosed amount. Another competitor, the Tilted Kilt, has settled multiple sexually hostile environment claims, including where a manager was caught video recording servers while they changed into their uniforms. These chains, often referred to as “breastaurants,” almost invariably settle or arbitrate any legal claims, avoiding court rulings at all cost.

FULL story at link.

[Lunabell]

1. And why are drag queen storytimes "grooming" and sexualizing children,

but THIS is ok?



This photo makes me ill.

[BWdem4life]

2. Sounds like a good way to make some money

Suing Hooters, that is. Since they avoid rulings at all costs by settling.

Do I have a case? lol