A Los Angeles Superior Court judge has ordered the transfer to Orange County of a lawsuit filed by a Black former Chipotle corporate manager who alleges she was treated in a demeaning and retaliatory way by a white boss, denied help from the CEO and other upper management members and ultimately fired for complaining.<\/p>\n
Judge Tony L. Richardson signed the order Wednesday in the wake of an agreement by both sides to move the case to Orange County and therefore make moot a pending May 14 hearing on a Chipotle change-of-venue motion. Attorneys for the multinational fast-casual restaurant chain had noted in their court papers that the plaintiff, identified only as Jane Doe, worked in a Newport Beach store and that Chipotle is based in that city. The same lawyers contended that the plaintiff was \u201cforum shopping\u201d by filing the case in Los Angeles County.<\/p>\n
Doe\u2019s attorney has also agreed to give her client\u2019s true name in an amended complaint to be filed in Orange County.<\/p>\n
According to Doe\u2019s suit filed Dec. 8, she seeks to \u201chold Chipotle accountable for its illegal conduct, going all the way up to its CEO \u2026 so that Chipotle never treats another Black female employee the way it treated plaintiff again.\u201d<\/p>\n
The plaintiff\u2019s allegations include racial and gender discrimination, hostile work environment, retaliation, negligent hiring, supervision and retention and defamation.<\/p>\n
Doe was hired as senior manager of corporate events in May 2024 and was initially eager to get started given her two decades of event-planning experience. She planned 10 corporate events before her termination and had four more scheduled.<\/p>\n
However, during the first day she worked for her white supervisor, Doe was humiliated when requested to read out loud a draft newsletter about the Juneteenth holiday that generalized about food eaten by Black people in the U.S., the suit states. The boss then told Doe that her parents should be proud of her for getting so far in life while making the assumption that Doe\u2019s family members were descendants of slaves, according to the suit.<\/p>\n
Throughout Doe\u2019s employment, the supervisor repeatedly made demeaning and racially offensive comments targeted at her as a Black woman, including that Doe would have to overcome such stereotypical assumptions as that Black women are lazy and unintelligent, the suit states.<\/p>\n
The supervisor also made comments about the plaintiff\u2019s breasts and told her that the company\u2019s senior male executives would enjoy what she wore on given days, yet the boss also told the plaintiff to wear long jackets to cover her buttocks, the suit further states.<\/p>\n
\u201cI am the one who determines success for you,\u201d the supervisor told Doe only and not non-Black female employees, the suit states.<\/p>\n
Doe endured despite the boss\u2019 alleged disparate treatment of her, earning praise from senior executives for successfully carrying out large events, the suit states. But Doe\u2019s complaints to human resources and the chief of corporate affairs brought only limited results, and the supervisor began retaliating against her, telling the plaintiff that she wanted to be present whenever Doe spoke with vendors, the further states.<\/p>\n
Doe was fired while on Chipotle\u2019s holiday party in Ohio in December 2024 \u2014 where she had earlier been introduced to the gathering by the CEO \u2014 after being falsely accused of violating Chipotle\u2019s expense reporting policy by failing to provide more information and because she allegedly lacked professionalism and was intimidating with Chipotle\u2019s partners, which the plaintiff also says was untrue, the suit states.<\/p>\n
The CEO had previously appeared sympathetic to her problems with her supervisor and invited her to reach out to him if necessary, but when she did so he did not respond, in effect ratifying the boss\u2019 conduct, the suit alleges.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A Los Angeles Superior Court judge has ordered the transfer to Orange County of a lawsuit filed by…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":28494,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[36],"tags":[163,165,164,3923,2402,458,15726,114191,11469,38493],"class_list":{"0":"post-258734","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-anaheim","8":"tag-anaheim","9":"tag-anaheim-headlines","10":"tag-anaheim-news","11":"tag-black","12":"tag-chipotle","13":"tag-corporate","14":"tag-former","15":"tag-managers","16":"tag-suit","17":"tag-transferred"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/258734","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=258734"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/258734\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/28494"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=258734"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=258734"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=258734"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}