Voyant Beauty Agrees to $75K Settlement Over Disability Discrimination Suit *Centurion Insurance AFS*

Voyant Beauty, LLC will pay $75,000 and provide other relief to settle a disability discrimination lawsuit filed by the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC), the federal agency announced.

The EEOC charged in its suit that Voyant terminated an employee on her first day of work upon learning that she is deaf. The company did so even though she was qualified for the job and could have performed its essential functions with or without accommodation.

According to the lawsuit, Voyant made the unfounded assumption that, because she is deaf, the employee could not safely work as a production worker at the company’s Countryside, Illinois, facility.

Such conduct violates the Americans with Disabilities Act, which prohibits discrimination based on disability and requires employers to reasonably accommodate an employee’s disability, unless an accommodation would impose an undue hardship. The EEOC filed suit in U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Illinois (Civil Action No.1:23-cv-014023), after first attempting to reach a pre-litigation settlement through its conciliation process.

Under the consent decree resolving the lawsuit, Voyant will pay $75,000 in compensation to the deaf individual. Voyant will also provide training to relevant management employees on federal laws prohibiting disability discrimination and will report to the EEOC on the hiring of disabled applicants for the decree’s duration.

Source: EEOC

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