By: Ty Hyderally, Esq, Francine Foner, Esq.

February 24, 2025

The DCR recently found probable cause that Red Lobster Hospitality, LLC (Red Lobster) violated the New Jersey Law Against Discrimination (LAD) when it failed to appropriately respond to a female employee’s complaints of sexual harassment at a Woodbury, New Jersey restaurant.  According to a press release issued earlier this month by New Jersey Attorney  General, Matthew J. Platkin, a female employee alleged that a male line cook had repeatedly sexually harassed her, leading her to lodge an internal complaint with management. However, the DCR found probable cause that despite her complaints, Red Lobster “did not conduct an impartial investigation or take meaningful steps to stop the harassment.”

Thus, no effective measures were taken by Red Lobster to prevent the harasser from continuing to sexually harass the complainant, which included, among other things, touching the complainant’s back and buttocks and forcibly attempting to kiss her. The DCR found that such actions were sufficiently severe or pervasive to create a hostile work environment for the complainant. Red Lobster then failed to take any steps to remedy the situation. In fact, Red Lobster even denied the complainant’s request for a change in her schedule so she would not have to work with the line cook she who she complained was sexually harassing her.

As Attorney General Platkin stated, “[e]veryone has a right to a work environment free from harassment. In New Jersey, our laws protect those rights.  No reasonable employer can allow such conduct to continue unaddressed. And we hold employers who fail to protect their employees accountable.”  These sentiments were echoed by Sundeep Iyer, Director of the Division on Civil Rights, who observed that “[s]exual harassment continues to be a significant barrier to gender equity in our workplaces. So it is critical that every employer do their part to combat workplace sexual harassment. In New Jersey, our laws provide strong protections against sexual harassment. But employees won’t benefit from those protections without meaningful enforcement of the law. That’s why we will continue our work to ensure that employers comply with their obligation under the law to investigate and take prompt, effective remedial action when workplace sexual harassment is reported to them.”

The complainant ended up leaving her job at Red Lobster, because Red Lobster denied her request to work at a different time than the alleged harasser and allegedly told her that the line cook was “more important” to its operations than the complainant was. However, despite that she voluntarily resigned from her position, the DCR found that there was sufficient evidence to support that she had been constructively discharged under the LAD, based upon her being subject to working conditions which “were so intolerable that a reasonable person would be forced to resign.”

Although this finding of probable cause by the DCR is not a final adjudication on the merits, it nonetheless should encourage New Jersey employers to take workplace claims of sexual harassment seriously, recognize the need to engage in proper and impartial investigations, and take sufficient remedial measures to ensure that employees are free from sexual harassment.

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