On June 30, 2006, the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) filed suit in the Philadelphia U.S. District Court in the Eastern District of Pennsylvania against Ross Stores, Inc. on behalf of a Russian employee. The EEOC alleged that Ross Stores had violated Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 (42 U.S.C. § 2000e et. seq.) by discriminating against the employee on the basis of her national origin. According to the EEOC, the employee was denied the pay increase she was entitled to receive upon promotion to Area Supervisor because of her Russian accent. The EEOC sought its costs and monetary and injunctive relief for the employee, including policy reform, anti-discrimination training, back pay, and compensation for emotional harm.

The parties reached a settlement, which the Court (Judge William H. Yohn Jr.) entered as a consent decree on January 3, 2007. The two-year decree provided the employee with $20,000, and contained a variety of injunctive provisions. Under the decree Ross was prohibited from retaliating and from discrimination, and was required not to disclosure the details of the case to potential employers, to expunge the employee's personnel file, to change its policies, to implement a complaint procedure, to investigate claims promptly, to distribute policies to employees, to provided biennial antidiscrimination training for supervisors, and to post an EEOC notice. The parties bore their own costs. No further activity appears on the docket and the case is now closed. The decree was to last for two years. The docket sheet doesn't show any further enforcement took place; the case was presumably closed in 2009.

Kenneth Gray - 07/25/2013
- 06/11/2017


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