A young mother from New Jersey said she was surprised when she inquired about waitressing jobs at a popular restaurant, only to hear that the place preferred to hire “people without children.”
Idelbel Colón, the job applicant, shared text messages with the KeynoteUSA New York I-Team that appear to show The Lobby, a sports-themed bar and restaurant in Elizabeth, excluding parents from employment consideration.
“Did you want to see if you still had any vacancies for waiters?” Columbus wrote in March.
In response, Terry González, former manager of the Lobby, responded: “I just hired 3 and I’m doing fine at the moment. We are also looking to hire people without children.”
According to the text messages, González further explained that the restaurant “had just fired two girls with boys because they kept getting sick.”
“This is discrimination,” Colón said. “There’s no way for him to just say he doesn’t want to hire women with children.”
Colón said she had worked at The Lobby for several years before having children. She admitted that Gonzalez fired her once, but then rehired her to work at a sister sports bar in Newark. That job was also granted to her before she gave birth.
The Lobby declined to answer questions about how hiring decisions are made at the company and instead issued a statement from its legal representative, Hatfield Schwartz Law Group. That statement distanced the company from Terry Gonzalez, calling him a “former” manager and suggesting he had no authority to make hiring decisions.
“The Lobby employs a diverse workforce and prides itself on providing a welcoming environment for all,” the statement read. “This was an informal text exchange between a former employee and a former manager. The views expressed do not represent those of The Lobby.”
The statement did not detail when González left his job as a manager and did not address a screenshot that Colón said he captured on March 6, 2024, which shows González advertising job openings at the Lobby on his personal Instagram page.
The I-Team contacted Terry González for comment but did not receive a response.
Some states, including New York, explicitly prohibit employers from excluding people from employment consideration for being parents. Although New Jersey law does not specifically prohibit employers from discriminating based on what is known as “family status,” the state’s Civil Rights Division, part of the Attorney General’s Office, said parents are often members of other protected classes.
For example, prejudice against people with children could be considered to have a “disparate impact” on people between 30 and 40 years old and therefore the prohibition on age discrimination could apply.
Just this week, the Civil Rights Division proposed adopting new language clarifying how the state can penalize employers and property owners for business conduct that is not expressly prohibited by the Anti-Discrimination Law, but that nevertheless tends to impose a burden greater than one or more. protected classes.
“It is important to understand that a policy or practice does not need malicious intent to have a harmful impact,” said Attorney General Matt Platkin. “We no longer live in a time where ‘I meant well’ or ‘I didn’t think’ are accepted excuses for denying equal opportunity to anyone.”
David Lopez, a professor at Rutgers Law School and former general counsel of the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, said employers who exclude mothers from hiring consideration could also be committing sex discrimination.
“What the employer community needs to understand is that they cannot engage in stereotypes against women,” Lopez said. “Both federal and state law prohibit sex discrimination, so if an employer refuses to hire women because they have children, and does not refuse to hire men, that would be sex discrimination.”
Colón has begun the process of filing equal employment opportunity complaints with the state and federal government. He said he wants The Lobby’s customers to consider the fact that the restaurant advertised a Mother’s Day brunch last month, just weeks after being told the location preferred not to hire mothers of children.
“I think it’s just ironic that they promote a Mother’s Day brunch,” Colón said.
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