EEOC Sues Little Caesars Franchise for Racial Harassment and Retaliation

SEATTLE – Target Market Enterprises, Inc. (TME), a franchise owner of Little Caesars restaurants in Western Washington, violated federal law when it allowed employees to use derogatory terms targeting African American employees at its Mount Vernon, Washington location, the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) charged in a lawsuit announced today.

According to the EEOC’s suit filed on Sept. 30, TME was aware of, but failed to stop employees from using racial slurs targeting African Americans, and promoted two harassers to shift lead positions. The new shift leads then regularly referred to African American employees using racial terms such as the N-word and “slave,” and one of the shift leads assigned the most menial tasks to two African American employees. After one harasser was fired, the other continued to use racially derogatory terms. TME fired one of the African American employees because he complained about the harassment, the EEOC said.

“Federal law requires employers to promptly investigate any incident where an employee has been targeted with slurs based on his or her race, and to take immediate steps to stop such offensive conduct,” said Elizabeth Cannon, director of the EEOC’s Seattle Field Office. “TME’s failure to consider the harasser’s prior use of this highly offensive racial slur in the restaurant is appalling, and the EEOC will take action when an employer has ignored its responsibilities under civil rights laws.”

Such alleged conduct violates Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which prohibits racial harassment in the workplace, requires employers to investigate complaints about racial harassment and to take steps to prevent such unlawful conduct, and also prohibits retaliation against an individual for protesting against what he reasonably believed was an unlawful employment action. The EEOC's lawsuit (EEOC v. Target Market Enterprises, Inc. d/b/a Little Caesars, No. 2:25-cv-1890), filed in the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Washington, seeks compensatory and punitive damages for a class of African American employees, back pay for the fired employee, and injunctive relief designed to prevent such discrimination in the future.

Assistant EEOC Regional Attorney Damien Lee said, “We will never reach the full promise of Title VII if employers are allowed to willfully ignore complaints of harassment that degrade employees because of their race – and then retaliate against a worker who complains by firing him. The EEOC will enforce federal civil rights law to ensure that individuals of all races can work and provide for themselves without discrimination or fear of retaliation.”

The EEOC’s Seattle Field Office has jurisdiction over Washington, Oregon, Idaho, Montana and Alaska.

For more information on race and color discrimination, please visit https://www.eeoc.gov/racecolor-discrimination. For more information on retaliation, please visit https://www.eeoc.gov/retaliation.

The EEOC is the sole federal agency authorized to investigate and litigate against businesses and other private sector employers for violations of federal laws prohibiting employment discrimination. For public sector employers, the EEOC shares jurisdiction with the Department of Justice’s Civil Rights Division; the EEOC is responsible for investigating charges against state and local government employers before referring them to DOJ for potential litigation. The EEOC also is responsible for coordinating the federal government’s employment antidiscrimination effort. More information about the EEOC is available at www.eeoc.gov. Stay connected with the latest EEOC news by subscribing to our email updates.