Papa Johns Fired a Blind Worker Before His First Shift

Papa Johns hired a blind worker and then terminated his contract before his first shift because they didn’t want him to bring his service dog to work, the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) claimed in a disability discrimination lawsuit. Michael Barnes, the legally blind worker, relies on the dog to travel to and from work and had asked if he could keep his dog in a back room while he worked, according to Business Insider.

The international pizza chain has agreed to a settlement of $175,000 for the disability discrimination lawsuit filed by the EEOC. The company will also give training on the Americans with Disabilities Act to staff on its Accommodation Request Committee and will evaluate its employment policies.

The lawsuit says that when the worker applied for a job at a Papa Johns restaurant in Athens, Georgia, in February 2020, he told the store manager that he would need his dog to travel to and from work but that he didn’t require it to stay next to him during his shifts.

In the interview, the store manager said that keeping the dog on site while Barnes worked was not a problem, and they talked through ways of keeping the dog in a space where customers couldn’t see him and away from food preparation. They discussed him being kept in the restaurant’s conference room or under the store manager’s desk, according to the lawsuit.

Papa Johns knowingly offered him the job, but before he could start his shifts, he had to submit a formal request to keep his dog on the premises while he worked. However, the lawsuit states that despite his discussion during his interview, Papa Johns’ Accommodation Request Committee denied the request made by Barnes and the store manager and said he should be terminated.

Per Business Insider, “The EEOC says that the committee failed to speak to Barnes and ‘reasonably investigate’ his accommodation before rejecting it.” The store manager told Barnes that if he wanted to hold on to the job, he would need to look for an “alternative to keeping the dog at the restaurant,” but since Barnes relies on his dog to travel, this wasn’t possible, so the company they ended up firing him before he even started working, the lawsuit explains.

The EEOC noted that this “violates the Americans with Disabilities Act, which prevents employers from discriminating against workers with disabilities and stipulates that they’re required to make ‘reasonable’ accommodations.”

In the press release announcing the lawsuit, Karla Gilbride, the EEOC’s general counsel, said, “Not allowing blind and visually impaired people to travel to and from work in the way that affords them confidence and independence is akin to telling sighted workers who rely on the flexibility and independence of driving that they may not travel to work by car.”

Papa Johns said in a statement shared with USA Today, “As an employer, we are committed to achieving equal opportunity and maintaining a diverse and inclusive culture for all of our team members, including those with disabilities.”