Valley firms sued by EEOC

Alana Roberts

Friday, Oct. 1, 2004 | 10:46 a.m.

The U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission has filed separate federal lawsuits this week alleging three Las Vegas Valley businesses violated the civil rights of their workers.

One of the complaints was filed in U.S. District Court against waste management company Republic Services Inc. alleging age discrimination. The lawsuit against Republic Services was filed on behalf of a group of supervisors who allege they were fired or denied transfers because they were over the age of 40. The Age Discrimination in Employment Act prohibits age discrimination.

In the lawsuit, the EEOC alleges Robert LaRocca, William Lacy and other supervisors were discriminated against based on their age. The suit alleges the company engaged in age discrimination since 2001 at the company's Sloan, North Las Vegas and Henderson facilities. The lawsuit is seeking back pay for the workers as well as restoration of the their jobs with seniority.

"The company's explanations for its conduct really smelled of age discrimination," Anna Park, regional attorney of the EEOC's Los Angeles district office, said about the lawsuit in an EEOC news release.

Fort Lauderdale, Fla.-based Republic Services spokesman Will Flower denied the company discriminated against the workers.

"We are anxious to receive and review the EEOC's claims. We are shocked by the EEOC's actions and believe that any legal action must be completely baseless because Republic simply would not condone or participate in any form of discrimination," Flower said.

The EEOC filed another lawsuit on behalf of an employee of home builder American Premiere Homes' who worked at the company's Las Vegas office. The lawsuit alleges the company's customer service director was fired after participating in an EEOC investigation of another worker's sexual harassment complaint. Representatives of American Premiere Homes could not be reached for comment.

EEOC attorneys also filed a lawsuit against Valentino Las Vegas at the Venetian on behalf of a group of female workers who allege several of the restaurant's managers sexually harassed them.

In the Valentino case, the group of women were allegedly subjected to unwanted sexual touching, sexual propositions, a series of crude sexual remarks and some of the women were terminated, the lawsuit said. It further said the restaurant's top management failed to respond to complaints by the workers. The lawsuit seeks backpay and compensatory damages.

Luciano Pellegrini, partner-chef of Valentino Las Vegas, declined to comment on the lawsuit.

In all of the cases the EEOC said it exhausted efforts to settle the cases out of court before filing the lawsuits.