Guadelupe Zamorano and Hermelinda Stevenson are employees of Albertsons, a major supermarket chain with more than 2,300 stores throughout many states, including California, Idaho, Oregon, Washington, and Montana. Albertsons stores also include supermarkets under the banners of Vons, Safeway, Amigos and Pavilions.
Zamorano and Stevenson are Latinas who also speak Spanish. They often would speak Spanish to their colleagues and each other during while employed at Albertson’s in San Diego. That is until their supervisor told them to stop, according to the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) in their recent lawsuit against Albertsons, alleging language based national origin discrimination in violation of Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964.
In the lawsuit, the EEOC alleges that Albertsons’ managers “…publicly reprimanded Hispanic employees caught speaking Spanish. The EEOC also contends that no corrective action was taken, despite numerous employee complaints which forced the employees to transfer.
The EEOC filed suit in U.S. District Court for the Southern District of California (EEOC v. Albertsons Inc., Case No. 3:18-cv-00852-MMA-BGS) after first attempting to reach a pre-litigation settlement through its conciliation process. The EEOC’s suit seeks monetary damages for the class of affected employees, as well as injunctive relief intended to prevent and correct discrimination in the future.
Targeting a particular language for censorship is often synonymous with targeting a particular national origin, which is both illegal and highly destructive to workplace morale and productivity,” said the EEOC.
The “No Spanish” Policy
According to the Washington Post’s reporting about this case:
“For months, according to an Equal Employment Opportunity Commission lawsuit filed on behalf of the two women and other minority employees, the San Diego store had an unwritten rule that applied exclusively to the Hispanics who worked there: They could not speak Spanish anywhere on the premises, even if they were on break.
Supervisors ‘verbally harassed’ Hispanic employees, the complaint says, publicly reprimanding them and threatening to discipline them for violations of the ‘No Spanish’ policy.
Zamorano, Stevenson and other Hispanic employees are named in the court action filed…against the grocery store chain. The suit involves incidents that happened in 2012 and 2013, when Hispanic employees say they were ‘subjected to disparate treatment and a hostile work environment because of their national origin.’
Managers repeatedly told them they could not speak Spanish, but gave no such admonishments to people in Albertsons uniforms who were not Hispanic.”
Asked by the Post to comment on the case, an Albertson’s spokesperson denied the alleged discrimination, commenting:
“The company does not have, and has never had a policy in which such language usage is prohibited…
While we cannot comment on this pending litigation specifically, Albertsons does not require that its employees speak English only… Albertsons serves a diverse customer population and encourages employees with foreign language abilities to use those skills to serve its customers.”
National origin discrimination protection under Title VII
Title VII prohibits national origin discrimination in employment. The EEOC has previously decided that employer rules requiring employees to speak only English in the workplace are illegal unless the employer can show that they are justified by a business necessity.
According to the EEOC:
“The [EEOC] defines national origin discrimination broadly as including, but not limited to, the denial of equal employment opportunity because of an individual’s, or his or her ancestor’s, place of origin or because an individual has the physical, cultural or linguistic characteristics of a national origin group. National origin discrimination often overlaps with race, color, or religious discrimination because a national origin group may be associated or perceived to be associated with a particular religion or race. Restrictive language policy violates Title VII if adopted for discriminatory reasons, such as national origin bias.”
Is this policy lawful?
Simply put, no.
The EEOC highlighted these actions which would be deemed unlawful when implementing an ‘overly broad’ English-only policy if it is made to:
- Avoid hearing foreign languages in the workplace
- Generate a reason to discipline
- Terminate people who are not native English speakers
- Create a hostile work environment for certain non-English speaking workers.
Federal courts and the EEOC have consistently determined that an employer’s rule requiring employees to speak English at all times, including breaks, is rarely justified and is more often illegal employment discrimination.
In the Albertson’s case, according to the EEOC, a store manager told Hispanic employees that the store barred them from speaking Spanish anywhere on store premises if any “non-Spanish speaking person” was also present.
“Violators were threatened with discipline, court documents say, and routinely received public reprimands like the one Zamorano and Stevenson say they got on that fall day in 2012. Zamorano said she was once chastised for conversing in Spanish with a Spanish-speaking customer.
Zamorano had worked at Albertsons for five years and Stevenson had worked there for 23 years when the policy was implemented, their complaint says.
After the dressing down, Zamorano called the company’s hotline to complain about [her supervisors’] conduct and the ban on Spanish.
According to the court papers, an employee union representative investigated the complaint and “told Zamorano that she needed to speak English because she was living in the United States.”
After another dressing down a month later, Zamorano requested a transfer to a different store, citing the ‘No Spanish’ police.
Stevenson also requested a transfer to a different store. In the complaint, she claimed the “harassment and monitoring from management” was making her anxious and physically sick.
To feel comfortable, she and other employees would leave the store’s premises to have lunch,” reported the Washington Post.
Final Thoughts
Language often finds itself at the crux of many passionate disagreements, arguments, and points of contention.
However, greater awareness of the power of speaking and understanding different languages is indeed a powerful tool linking all of us. The resultant economic efficacy involved in being able to speak your customers’ language is undeniable, as is the greater knowledge and appreciation of people and myriad cultures.
But, if such awareness, knowledge, and understanding prove to be unavailing, federal law prohibits discriminating against people just because of their languages and countries of origin.
**Read some of Bruce Adelson’s other blog posts to learn about more developments in language access law, and be sure to contact us if you’re interested in a consultation about your own organization’s compliance with federal language access law.
© Bruce L. Adelson 2018, special for Bromberg, All Rights Reserved The material herein is educational and informational only. No legal advice is intended or conveyed.
Bruce L. Adelson, Esq, CEO of Federal Compliance Consulting LLC is nationally recognized for his compliance expertise concerning many federal laws. Mr. Adelson is a former U.S Department of Justice Civil Rights Division Senior Trial Attorney.
Mr. Adelson teaches cultural and civil rights awareness at Georgetown University School of Medicine in Washington, D.C.