Safelite has moved to dismiss several counts in an alleged sex-based discrimination lawsuit brought by the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC).
The EEOC filed suit on June 29 in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Georgia, Atlanta Division. The complaint includes allegations from Georgia resident Jillian Hulse and is a proposed class action.
The EEOC’s filing alleges that Hulse was denied employment at Safelite based on her gender and alleges that Safelite shop managers explicitly told other members of the proposed class that the company “[doesn’t] hire females for the position.”
On Aug. 31, Safelite moved to dismiss Hulse’s claims as well as allegations that Safelite exhibits a pattern of discrimination.
Safelite argues that Hulse’s claims aren’t actionable because the suit was filed outside of the statute of limitations window.
Safelite claims that the EEOC also didn’t offer any evidence of systematic discrimination, including a formal policy, standardized exclusionary criteria or orders from Safelite headquarters.
“Similarly, there are no allegations regarding the same manager [as the one Hulse spoke with]; the same district manager; the same region; or any direction from corporate leadership to discriminate against women,” the legal filing says.
The filing also argues that there are too few alleged instances of discrimination for it to constitute a pattern. Safelite claims that, as a government organization, the EEOC “conducted a comprehensive pre-suit investigation spanning nearly four years.”
“Apart from Hulse, the complaint includes just four alleged comments by unnamed individuals to four unnamed [Safelite] applicants,” says Safelite’s filing. “That is a total of six instances across multiple years, hundreds of stores and thousands of employment decisions.”
Safelite claims that the EEOC’s allegations cite “information and belief” instead of established data. Safelite alleges that the original complaint doesn’t include statistics on applicant flow numbers, hiring rates, applicant pool demographics, comparative statistics, time periods, sample sizes, locations analyzed or methodology.
The motion to dismiss cites legal precedent explaining why the disparate-impact discrimination claims are invalid, as well as a recent U.S. Department of Justice memorandum stating that the EEOC’s application of disparate-impact privileges is “unconstitutional.”
As of press time, there has not yet been any response to Safelite’s motion to dismiss.
