Age Discrimination Lawsuit Could Affect Hiring Practices. The EEOC says Texas Roadhouse chain passes over older job applicants.

Bloomberg reports:

Maria DeSimone was 40 when she applied for a server job at a Texas Roadhouse in Palm Bay, Fla., in 2009. Her family needed more income, so the wife and mother of two, who had two years of restaurant experience, decided to return to work. A manager said he’d get back to her.

He never did, and when she called to follow up on her application, DeSimone was told the restaurant wasn’t hiring. She later learned that the 19-year-old daughter of a friend, who’d never worked in a restaurant, got the job.

DeSimone is among 55 women and men named as claimants in a lawsuit against the Texas Roadhouse restaurant chain by the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. Brought four years ago in federal court in Boston, the suit says Texas Roadhouse discriminated against workers 40 and older by refusing to employ enough of them in front-of-house jobs as hosts, bartenders, and servers. “We’re thinking not just about the case at hand but also about influencing behavior more broadly,” says Ray Peeler, a senior EEOC attorney-adviser. Employers, he says, can’t assume older applicants don’t have “the energy or excitement or whatever trait they’re trying to capture.” Texas Roadhouse denies the EEOC’s allegations.

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