Chipotle Hispanic Worker Bias Lawsuit Denied Class Cert.

A federal judge in California has rejected Chipotle workers’ bid for class certification in a lawsuit claiming that the restaurant chain discriminates against Hispanic workers.

The decision to deny class certification was made by U.S. District Judge Haywood S. Gilliam Jr.

According to the judge, the discrimination claims did not merit class certification because the workers did not provide enough evidence to show that discrimination was consistent as a company policy, and did not show that the experiences of a few workers were consistent with the experiences of the entire proposed Class.

The Chipotle discrimination class action lawsuit had aimed to certify a Class of around 43,000 current or former Chipotle employees of Hispanic origin, who had worked at a California Chipotle location since Nov. 14, 2011.

The Chipotle employment discrimination class action lawsuit asserts that Chipotle and its corporate policies “systematically discriminate” against Hispanic employees, particularly against Mexican employees.

Allegedly, the company does not promote employees to managers if they do not speak English or do not speak it well. According to the employees, this failure to promote occurs even if the worker is otherwise qualified to be a manager.

The workers also claim that Hispanic employees face other kinds of discrimination. According to the workers, the company creates false performance reviews that depict the workers’ performance as worse than it really is.

Additionally, the Chipotle discrimination class action lawsuit says that the restaurant implements an “unwritten English-only policy,” prohibits workers from speaking Spanish in the work place, and requires employees to be proficient in English before being promoted to manager.

Judge Gilliam dissected the evidence provided in support of the claim that workers are prohibited from speaking Spanish in the workplace. According to the judge, the plaintiffs had different experiences around being allowed to speak Spanish in the workplace. The judge argues that these differences indicate that the workers have not proven that a company policy is at play.

Specifically, Judge Gilliam notes that only some of the workers claim that they were completely prohibited from speaking Spanish at their job, while others only claimed that they were sometimes prohibited. The judge notes that some workers state that they were not at all prohibited from speaking Spanish.

The judge went on to critique the argument that English proficiency was required for promotion. He noted that only six of the eight workers “understood that they had to speak English ‘well’ or ‘perfect’ to be eligible for promotion,” saying that the fact that not all workers understood this to be the case indicated that class certification was not appropriate.

In sum, Judge Gilliam determined that the workers did not meet the requirement of providing enough “evidentiary proof” to warrant class certification.

Have you experienced workplace discrimination? Tell us about it in the comments below.

The Chipotle workers are represented by Carolyn Cottrell, David Leimbach, Sri Edelstein, and Scott Gordon of Schneider Wallace Cottrell Konecky Wotkyns LLP, and Karen Carrera and Virginia Villegas of Villegas Carrera Inc.

The Chipotle Employee Discrimination Class Action Lawsuit is Guzman, et al. v. Chipotle Mexican Grill Inc., et al., Case No. 17-cv-02606-HSG, in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California.

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