The U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) charged Walmart of violating federal law by failing to accommodate an employee with intellectual disability who needed a job coach. In a lawsuit announced on September 26, the agency also alleges that the retailer allowed a hostile work environment to develop, targeting both the employee and a coworker because of their disabilities.
According to the EEOC’s lawsuit, in November and December 2021, supervisors harassed two employees with intellectual disabilities who worked as cart pushers at the Mount Pleasant, Wisconsin location, calling them “stupid” and “slow.” One employee said his supervisor called him a “retard” and shut the store’s door on him, sending him home early. When he learned the store manager would not address his supervisor’s harassing conduct, he quit because he could not return to the hostile work environment.
The lawsuit also alleged Walmart denied one of the employees the reasonable accommodation of a job coach, refusing to speak with job coaches assisting the employee at no cost to the company. Store managers and human resources representatives did not allow the job coaches inside the facility and repeatedly refused to discuss the employee’s schedule, training needs, need for breaks, and harassment experience.
“Employers have a legal obligation to work with employees who need accommodations for disabilities and to stop and prevent disability-based harassment,” said Victor Chen, an EEOC spokesperson. “Individuals with disabilities, like all workers, deserve respect and have a right to earn a living without being subjected to discriminatory harassment in the workplace.”
Such alleged conduct violates the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA), which prohibits an employer from discriminating on the basis of disability and requires employers to grant reasonable accommodations unless they pose an undue hardship. The EEOC filed suit (EEOC v. Walmart Inc., Case No. 25-cv-1480) in U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Wisconsin, after first attempting to reach a pre-litigation settlement through its administrative conciliation process.
