Five former female servers at two Saks’ cafes claimed in a lawsuit filed in Manhattan Federal Court that they were let go because they were “not attractive enough” and “getting old,” reports the New York Daily News.
The women claimed that new management of the cafes wanted to change the restaurants’ image to appeal to a younger, hipper crowd. Reports say that it “became clear to plaintiffs that only young, male servers fit within Centerplate’s image of fine-dining at Saks and its vision of creating ‘dining experiences reflective of the iconic luxury retailer’.”
The department store began leasing its restaurant operations to the Centerplate food and beverage corporation in fall 2012.
While many older workers will identify with the situation of being pushed aside in favor of someone younger, the problem the five waitresses have is this: Age discrimination cases are notoriously hard to prove.
People age 40 and older are a protected class with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. It is illegal for a company with more than 20 workers to discriminate against anyone based on their age. There were more than 20,000 complaints of age discrimination filed with the EEOC last year, continuing an upward trend. But while the number of EEOC complaints has steadily risen, it’s also gotten harder to win an age discrimination suit.
Many place blame on a 2009 Supreme Court case, Gross v. FBL Financial Services, Inc., for raising the bar on proving age discrimination. Instead of having to prove that age was a contributing factor in an employer’s decision to fire or demote someone (or to not hire them in the first place), plaintiffs now have to prove that age was the only factor.
Still, we suspect the former Saks’ waitresses have probably already won in the court of public opinion.
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