Dive Brief:
\nCoca-Cola Beverages Northeast violated Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 by privately inviting women workers on a two-day networking trip in September 2024, the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission alleged in a lawsuit filed Wednesday.
\nEEOC pointed to Coca-Cola Beverages Northeast\u2019s failure to invite men to the event, which was employer-sponsored, as grounds for a lawsuit.
\nThe commission also pointed to the fact that women workers were excused from their regular duties but paid their normal salary or wages as discrimination against the men working at Coca-Cola Beverages Northeast.<\/p>\n
Dive Insight:
\nThis lawsuit brought by EEOC is yet another in a string of recently publicized lawsuits involving majority-group plaintiffs alleging discrimination.<\/p>\n
Employment attorneys told HR Dive last month that they had not seen an uptick in \u201creverse discrimination\u201d lawsuits over the past year in their private practice. However, they did foretell EEOC homing in on reverse discrimination as a strategic priority for 2026.<\/p>\n
EEOC\u2019s lawsuit against Coca-Cola Beverages Northeast is right in line with this shift in enforcement.<\/p>\n
\u201cExcluding men from an employer-sponsored event is a Title VII violation that the EEOC will act to remedy through litigation when necessary,\u201d said Catherine Eschbach, acting EEOC general counsel, in a statement Wednesday.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe EEOC remains committed to ensuring that all employees \u2014 men and women alike \u2014 enjoy equal access to all aspects of their employment, including participation in employer-sponsored events, regardless of their sex, race or other protected category,\u201d Eschbach added.<\/p>\n
Coca-Cola Beverages Northeast maintains that it did not violate Title VII.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis event fully complied with existing EEOC regulation and its public commentary approving of such events,\u201d a spokesperson for the bottler told HR Dive. \u201cCoca-Cola Beverages Northeast finds it disappointing that the EEOC did not conduct a full investigation and we look forward to having our day in open court where the full story told to a jury will vindicate us.\u201d<\/p>\n
The spokesperson also clarified that it was a one-day event, and said that the bottler will continue to \u201cfocus on fairness, respect, and opportunity for everyone.\u201d<\/p>\n
Correction: A previous version of the article incorrectly described Coca-Cola Beverages Northeast. It is a franchised bottler of Coca-Cola.<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Dive Brief: Coca-Cola Beverages Northeast violated Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 by privately inviting women workers on a two-day networking trip in September 2024, the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission alleged in a lawsuit filed Wednesday. EEOC pointed to Coca-Cola Beverages Northeast\u2019s failure to invite men to the event, which was […]<\/p>","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":2902,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2901","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"blocksy_meta":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.talentcentralhr.com\/zh\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2901","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.talentcentralhr.com\/zh\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.talentcentralhr.com\/zh\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.talentcentralhr.com\/zh\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.talentcentralhr.com\/zh\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2901"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.talentcentralhr.com\/zh\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2901\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2903,"href":"https:\/\/www.talentcentralhr.com\/zh\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2901\/revisions\/2903"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.talentcentralhr.com\/zh\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2902"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.talentcentralhr.com\/zh\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2901"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.talentcentralhr.com\/zh\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2901"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.talentcentralhr.com\/zh\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2901"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}