A Tulsa printing company must pay $47,500 to settle a racial harassment lawsuit filed by the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) on behalf of a mixed-race female employee who said she resigned after repeatedly being called “Ape” and “Congo” by a manager.
According to the consent decree filed on Aug. 13 in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Oklahoma, Judge Sara E. Hill approved the legal settlement between the EEOC and Worldwide Printing, Inc., which does business as ResourceOne in Tulsa. Her order also requires the company to adopt and maintain policies and procedures designed to prevent future discrimination based on race, national origin and genetic information.
The case started in August of 2022 when Angela Navarro-Alcorn, who worked as a mail sorter for ResourceOne, showed her supervisor Mor Lee the results of a home DNA kit, which revealed that Navarro-Alcorn “had several lines of ancestry, including a small percentage allegedly from Cameroon, the Congo and Northern Africa,” according to the original complaint, obtained by Atlanta Black Star.
After seeing the results, Lee “laughed and started calling Navarro-Alcorn ‘ape’ and ‘Congo,’ and persisted in doing so every time they worked together, despite Navarro-Alcorn asking her boss to stop, the lawsuit claimed.
Lee also allegedly made other insulting comments, such as Navarro-Alcorn “swings through the trees,” that she was an “Ape Princess,” and asked her who she was going to pick as her “King,” saying there were “plenty to choose from” among her fellow employees.
Navarro-Alcorn said she eventually became emotionally distraught and told Lee’s supervisor, Brett Jones, about the harassment. But Jones did not tell Lee to stop the name-calling and then mocked Navarro-Alcorn by asking her which derisive name she preferred to be called.
Lee also began to assign Navarro-Alcorn less favorable job duties, including working on faster machines rather than preferred slower machines, the complaint said.
The harassment was so intolerable that it led Navarro-Alcorn to resign. Soon thereafter, Lee obtained her phone number from someone at work and sent her a text message calling her “Congo.”
In its complaint filed on her behalf in September of 2023, the EEOC said Navarro-Alcorn’s forced resignation was tantamount to a constructive firing by ResourceOne, whose conduct had violated the Genetic Information Nondiscrimination Act, which prohibits discrimination and harassment in the workplace based on genetic information, and Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which prohibits workplace discrimination based on national origin and race.
Navarro-Alcorn and the EEOC had engaged in efforts to resolve her complaints with ResourceOne prior to filing the lawsuit, seeking to give her employer the opportunity to remedy its discriminatory practices, but both parties agreed the conciliation efforts failed.
In its original answer to the lawsuit filed in January, ResourceOne denied most of the EEOC’s claims, including that any discriminatory practices occurred, and said that any action its employees took with regard to Navarro-Alcorn “was based on legitimate, non-discriminatory, non-pretextual business reasons.”
The company argued that Navarro-Alcorn “voluntarily resigned from her employment,” was not treated any differently from similarly situated employees who were not members of a protected class, and “cannot show any adverse employment action.” It said she suffered no damages and was not entitled to relief.
The consent decree, whose terms represent a compromise between the parties’ opposing positions, dramatically changed the company’s posture.
In it, ResourceOne agreed not to harass or retaliate on any individual on the basis of that individual’s national origin, race or genetic information.
The company also agreed to pay Navarro-Alcorn $47,500, with $2,175 for back pay and $45,325 in compensatory damages. It was not allowed to condition the relief with any requirements that the plaintiff keep the settlement or her allegations in the case confidential.
The judge’s order spells out that ResourceOne must provide extensive employee training regarding compliance with federal discrimination laws, including adopting and posting policies and procedures that describe prohibited conduct, and providing employees with multiple ways to report such violations.
That includes providing a “routinely monitored hotline phone number and email address to whom employees can report concerns about possible discrimination, harassment or retaliation,” as well as assurances that all such reports will be taken seriously and addressed with appropriate remedial action, up to and including termination of employees who violate anti-discrimination policies.
Among the “additional equitable remedies” listed in the consent decree is an order that ResourceOne “shall not rehire Mor Lee at any of its facilities or operations in the United States” and will within 10 days place a notice in her personnel record “indicating that she is ineligible for rehire.”
The decree, which will remain in force through March 31, 2027, also requires ResourceOne to report its policy and procedure changes and all employee complaints or reports of harassment or discrimination it receives to the EEOC going forward.
“Ethnic slurs are abhorrent anywhere, and they can never be tolerated in the workplace,” said Andrea G. Baran, regional attorney for the EEOC’s St. Louis District office, in a statement last week. “Employers are obligated to protect their workers from this kind of conduct, and the consent decree entered by the court today will help ensure that ResourceOne’s workers are protected from harassment.”
Noting that the consent decree “not only requires ResourceOne to proactively work to prevent discrimination and harassment, but it also requires the company to educate employees about their rights,” David S. Davis, director of the EEOC’s St. Louis District office, added, “Educating workers is key to ending on-the-job harassment.”
