Race Discrimination: Posh Hotel Will Pay Over $1 Million For Replacing Minority Bellmen With “Cool Looking” White Workers

The Mondrian Hotel and its Sky Bar, a hangout for a hip Hollywood clientele, agreed to pay $1.08 million to settle a suit brought by the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission on behalf of a group of mostly minority bellmen who claimed they were fired because they looked “too ethnic.” The workers were allegedly replaced with “cool-looking” white workers. The EEOC charged that the firings were race-based, and that in preparation for the hotel’s reopening, applicants were recruited on the basis of whether they were pretty, handsome, or “cool.” Of the nine fired workers, two were Latino, two were Cambodian, three were Filipino, one was African-American, and one was white.