Results tagged “discrimination”

It is not a good week for businesses ending in "&H" — first the H&H Bagel owner was indicted on tax fraud, and now word is getting out that the Hasidic-run B&H Photo Video is being sued to the tune of $8 million in a gender bias discrimination lawsuit. According to the NY Times, the two unrelated cases were announced just 30 minutes apart yesterday.

Cab driver Medhat Mohamed has been given a bad rep for kicking a couple out of his cab, and now the NY Post's Andrea Peyser is standing up for him — giving him a lexical embrace, if you will.

Bad news for the cabbie who kicked the embracing gay couple to the curb on Monday night — Mayor Bloomberg has gotten involved! The NY Post reports that he declared everyone has the right to ride in a cab (duh), and added, "I thought the taxi driver's behavior -- if it is as reported -- was a disgrace. Somebody's orientation has absolutely nothing to do with whether they can ride a taxi. That kind of attitude doesn't fit with what this city's become."

A cabbie is being called out for kicking a gay couple to the curb after they dared embrace in his car. The G-rated PDA caused Medhat Mohamed to allegedly toss the two out just two blocks after he had picked them up at 13th Street and First Avenue around 10:20 p.m. Monday night.

Lawyers for the recently-reopened Hawaiian Tropic Zone have failed to convince a judge that a discrimination lawsuit against the restaurant should be dismissed. Now it's up to a jury to decide whether management at the Times Square HTZ turned Melody Morales down for a job because her deportment was too ethnic. Morales filed the suit back in January after managers allegedly told her, "We will not hire you because you have a 'speech problem.' You have a Latin accent. You don't speak white. You are ghetto."

After initially being given a pass from testifying in the federal case against the FDNY's alleged discriminatory practices with its entrance exams, Mayor Bloomberg has been ordered to give a deposition in the case due to his eagerness to expound upon it while giving testimony before Congress during Sonia Sotomayor's confirmation hearings. The News says the deposition was ordered "as a result of Bloomberg's blabbing" and the Times suggests next time he testifies, the mayor "might want to stick to the subject." Bloomberg voluntarily spoke at length about the FDNY case while relating it to a similar one in New Haven that Sotomayor had decided on (a ruling he disagreed with). The federal judge in the FDNY discrimination suit said, "The mayor's sworn testimony before Congress indicates his personal involvement in the events at issue in this litigation." Last week a judge ruled the entrance exams "unfairly excluded hundreds of qualified people of color" and the case is now heading toward its penal phase. When asked about the judge's orders, the mayor said, "I have to talk to our lawyers, but normally I give depositions when asked."

While it's probably not too unbelievable that American Apparel has a certain aesthetic they like to portray to their legions of customers donning mesh v-necks, it may be more surprising to hear that... actually this isn't that surprising either. According to a Gawker tipster, Dov Charney "is demanding the firing of employees he deems unattractive and thus detrimental" to said aesthetic.

A federal judge ruled that the FDNY's written exams "unfairly excluded hundreds of qualified people of color." Judge Nicholas Garaufis wrote, "These unlawful practices barred over a thousand additional black and Hispanic applicants from consideration for appointment as FDNY firefighters, and unfairly delayed the appointment of hundreds of black and Hispanic firefighters." Back in 2007, the Justice Department joined the Vulcan Society to sue the fire department because many more black and Hispanic candidates failed the exam; at the time, only 7.5% of the FDNY was black and/or Hispanic (while in LA and Philadelphia, fire departments were around 40% black and/or Hispanic). The AP reports, "Garaufis said he must consider remedies to end the discrimination which occurred in written exams given to thousands of firefighter candidates from 1999 to 2007." The city has not decided whether it will appeal the decision.

Mayor Bloomberg spent several hours today being deposed by the federal government. The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission filed a lawsuit in 2007 against the mayor's company, Bloomberg LP, for discrimination against women and accused the mayor of creating a "systemic, top-down culture of discrimination. Though the discrimination allegedly occurred after Bloomberg became mayor in 2001—one example is that former Bloomberg LP CEO Lex Fenwick allegedly said, "I'm not having any pregnant bitches work for me"—but one complaint claimed Bloomberg told a top saleswoman who said she was pregnant, "Kill it." CityRoom reports that one plaintiffs' lawyer said Bloomberg was cooperative, "The mayor is a very smart, sophisticated person and I think his demeanor is the way it normally would be... He happens to be a very good witness." A Bloomberg LP spokesperson said, "We are confident that once all the facts come out they will demonstrate that the claims have no merit."

Playboy's former fashion director Joseph DeAcetis filed a $4 million lawsuit claiming he was fired from the magazine "because of his sexual orientation and age," the Post reports. According to the lawsuit, DeAcetis's boss, editorial director Christopher Napolitano, "referred to plaintiff and other homosexuals as 'girls' and laughed at [him] because of his enjoyment of baseball because it was not a girl sport." Napolitano was also, the lawsuit charges, upset about DeAcetis's appearance on WPIX's morning show (see video of one here), saying DeAcetis's "grey hair was visible" and that he "looked old." DeAcetis claims his work was praised by executives (including daughter of Hef Christine Hefner), but that his "duties [were] being slowly stripped away and handed over to his 27-year-old straight male assistant and a 38-year-old straight female fashion editor." Playboy tells the Post it "takes these allegations very seriously" and has been looking into the matter.

There was a big "summit" meeting this morning at Tom Colicchio's Craftsteak restaurant to discuss the release of an interesting, albeit unsurprising, study highlighting the racist hiring practices at NYC restaurants. Commissioned by the Restaurant Opportunities Center of New York, the study enlisted 37 people to pose as white, black, Asian-American and Latino job applicants and visit restaurants looking for work. Grouped in pairs with different races (but matched for age, appearance and gender), they would arrive at restaurants within about a half hour of each other to apply for a job.

21-year-old Melody Morales says her "dream job" of working at Hawaiian Tropic Zone was crushed by managers who refused to give her a shot because of her Latin roots. So Morales, who grew up on the Upper West Side, is following the lead of a multi-million dollar class action lawsuit against the Times Square theme restaurant, which is being sued by employees who accuse corporate brass of covering up a manager's repeated sexual abuse. Morales says her many attempts to get work at HTZ were finally shot down by managers who told her, "We will not hire you because you have a 'speech problem.' You have a Latin accent. You don't speak white. You are ghetto." Her lawyer wants $130,000 a year for every year she might have worked there, plus punitive damages. Morales, who the Post reports has been "reduced to working in a bikini bar in upstate Ossining," tells the tabloid, "I'm five-foot-six. I'm slim and slender. I got boobs. Ok? I was perfect for the job."

That $600 million discrimination lawsuit brought by four ex-employees of Hawaiian Tropic Zone is heating up: the plaintiff accusing one of the managers of raping her in the back of a cab says HT Zone's top brass bribed her with hush money, which is why she didn't go to the cops until some seven months after the incident. We've known for some time that general manager Anthony Rakis allegedly drugged former manager Giulietta Consalvo, then threw money at the cab driver during the assault, saying "Keep driving, buddy." Now court documents obtained by the Daily News reveal that Consalvo was given a $5,000 bonus and a $10,000 raise after the alleged rape, which she accepted in exchange for silence. Owners of the midtown restaurant, whose bikini-clad waitresses make Hooters look like Chuck E. Cheese, are accused of turning a blind eye as Rakis ran wild, demanding oral sex from employees and punishing those who "refused to submit."

A jury decided that real estate developer (and father of the former gov) Bernard Spitzer discriminated against employees and must pay them $1.3 million in back wages and damage. Four employees had sued Spitzer and the building management at 150 East 57th Street after they were fired by the super and replaced by white or light-skinned Hispanics. The building management company settled with them, but Spitzer did not and the suit headed to court. The ailing 84-year-old, who had denied racism ("If I see a doorman, I see a doorman - I do not see a white doorman or a black doorman... I don't see the blackness or whiteness or pinkness or yellowness of a doorman"), was not in court; his lawyer said they will appeal.

In a Bronx courtroom yesterday, 84-year-old real estate developer Bernard Spitzer insisted four black employees at one of his apartment buildings were not fired due to their race. The father of the former governor said, "If I see a doorman, I see a doorman - I do not see a white doorman or a black doorman... I don't see the blackness or whiteness or pinkness or yellowness of a doorman. I have a mind that focuses on the fact that a doorman operates as a doorman."

You may have already learned, with equal parts dread and anticipation, that TV personality and terrorist-scarf-wearer Rachael Ray is writing a memoir. Working title: EVOhno. Anyway, now it looks like she’ll have to add another chapter about eating disorders and workplace sensitivity, as an anorexic ex-employee has just filed a lawsuit in New York State Supreme court against CBS and The Rachael Ray Show.

Last month Tavern on the Green settled a discrimination lawsuit for $2.2 million dollars; today the Times has a detailed profile on the lead complainant, an East African immigrant who grew up in refugee camps before escaping to the U.S. as a teenager. She says that while working at Tavern as a hostess, “I was asked to perform sexual favors in great detail by this manager. And when I refused, I was told that I was not going to get the schedule I wanted.” In case anyone needs more reasons to shun Tavern, she goes on.

Last September three women filed a lawsuit against Mayor Bloomberg’s company, Bloomberg LP, accusing Bloomberg of being personally responsible for creating a "systemic, top-down culture of discrimination," and accusing Bloomberg LP CEO Lex Fenwick of firing two pregnant employees with this gangsta riposte: “I'm not having any pregnant bitches working for me.”

A class action lawsuit was filed in New York federal court yesterday, alleging that real estate firm "Brown Harris Stevens Brooklyn LLC (BHS) and its senior vice president and two real estate agents discriminate against families with children attempting to rent apartments in Brooklyn."

According to its website, Murray Hill's Tonic East “is the most well rounded sports bar in the area, with an attractive scene of locals.” But it seems black was not deemed beautiful by the management: they recently agreed to settle a discrimination lawsuit brought by Attorney General Andrew Cuomo to the tune of $35,000.

After a parents of a rejected student filed a class action lawsuit, the Department of Education asked a federal judge to overturn a 1974 ruling that set in place quotas to keep the school 40% minority and 60% white. The DOE wants the court to overturn the ruling immediately so the 2008-2009 will be quota-free.

Before the first model walked down the runway, Naomi Campbell spoke out about the lack of minorities at this year's Fashion Week. The Daily News follows up on her initial accusation as the tents emptied out this weekend, saying that "a campaign to promote diversity on the runways during New York's Fashion Week appears to have failed miserably."