Treatment Centers, LLC, doing business as Lexington Treatment Associates, a Delaware-based limited liability company that owns and operates methadone clinics in North Carolina, will pay a total of $110,000 and provide other relief to settle a racial harassment lawsuit brought by the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC), the federal agency announced. The EEOC had charged that the company violated federal law when it subjected three black employees at its Lexington, N.C., facility to a racially hostile work environment. According to the EEOC’s lawsuit, from February 2017 to at least July 2018, Treatment Centers subjected former Substance Abuse Counselor Allen Parson and two other African American employees, Marquita Williams and LaFonda Bruinton, to a racially hostile work environment. The EEOC alleged that the employees were repeatedly and openly subjected to racial slurs by several clients of the facility. The EEOC further charged that Treatment Centers maintained a practice of making race-based counselor assignments to accommodate white clients’ racial preferences not to be assigned to black counselors. The agency charged that the race-based assignments contributed to the hostile work environment that existed for black employees. Such alleged conduct violates Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which prohibits discrimination based on race, including racial harassment.
