A former Hooters employee is suing the chain for racial discrimination, claiming she was fired for being black and having blonde highlights.
According to CBS Baltimore, Farryn Johnson claims the restaurant allows white servers to have highlights in their hair, but African-American waitresses are not granted the same privileges.
"I didn't see that it would be a big issue just because there were a lot of other employees working at the restaurant of other races with color in their hair," Johnson said. "For instance, there were Asian girls with red hair and Caucasian girls with black hair and blond streaks so I didn't think it would be an issue for the little piece of blonde highlight in my hair."
The 25-year-old waitress, who dons a pixie cut with a streak of blonde, said she was fired after managers said her hair color violated the restaurant's standards. Johnson filed a complaint with the Maryland Commission on Civil Rights, CBS News reported.
"They gave me write-ups and they told me I need to take the color out of my hair," Johnson said. "And they said I couldn't have blonde in my hair because I'm black. They specifically said, 'Black women don't have blonde in their hair, so you need to take it out.'"
Johnson's lawyer, Jessica Weber, explained to CBS Baltimore that an employer can institute grooming standards, but an employer cannot legally have separate rules for African-Americans and whites.
"What's wrong is that both federal and state law clearly say employers can't impose two separate and distinct rules governing employee standards one for African-American employees and one for everyone else. And that's clearly what Hooters did here," Weber said.
This is not the first racial discrimination allegation made against the restaurant chain.
According to the New York Times, in 2012 Kisuk Cha and his girlfriend, both Korean, ordered their meal to go at a Hooters location in Fresh Meadows, Queens. Cha alleged the servers then began laughing and gawking at them, and added a derogatory term used to describe Asians, "Chinx," to their receipt.
