Lawry's Restaurant Chain Pays In Gender Discrimination Suit

(Los Angeles, CA) -- Pasadena-based Lawry's restaurant chain will pay more than a million dollars to settle a gender discrimination suit because it wouldn't hire men as waiters. The 2006 lawsuit was filed in 2006 by the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. It was based on a 2003 complaint by a busboy who said the restaurant refused to promote him to the better-paid position of waiter because he wasn't female. Despite the fact that the 1964 Civil Rights Act prohibits gender discrimination, the steak house chain had maintained a practice of hiring only women as waiters since the late 1930s. Waiters at Lawry's can earn 50 to 60 thousand dollars a year, according to the "Los Angeles Times."<