Updated at 7:54 p.m.
The U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission filed a lawsuit on Tuesday against Elderwood at Burlington, a long-term care facility, alleging it failed to protect its employees from ”ongoing and egregious racial harassment.”
White patients and residents at the Burlington facility have repeatedly called Black nurses and nurse assistants racial slurs since 2020, according to a press release issued by the EEOC, the federal agency charged with enforcing the Civil Rights Act of 1964.
“One patient repeatedly told Black employees to ‘go back to Africa’; followed Black employees throughout the facility so as to racially berate them; and physically assaulted Black employees because of their race,” the commission said in the release.
Though Elderwood’s managers and supervisors witnessed some of the incidents, the commission alleges, they did not stop the behavior or protect the employees. The commission argues that the conduct of Elderwood managers violates Title VII of the Civil Rights Act, which prohibits employers from discriminating against employees on the basis of race.
“Elderwood told the Black employees that its residents could say what they wanted at the facility,” the EEOC said. “In response to one complaint by a Black nurse, an Elderwood manager told her that she should be used to being the target of racial slurs because she ‘is from the South.’”
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