From the Classroom to the Boardroom
Travel I-84 south and you’ll sure be relieved to see the welcoming big red Sheetz sign from the highway. On our road trips between Newport, RI, and Key West, FL, Dick and I know we’ll be welcomed in these clean, efficient stops. More interesting to us is how Sheetz personifies America.
Sheetz, Inc., an American chain of convenience stores and coffee shops, originated as a dairy store, and its headquarters are in Altoona, PA. At almost all locations, Sheetz also sells gasoline, and in a few locations, there are full-scale truck stops, including showers and a laundromat. Open 27/7, Sheetz has over 700 stores located in Central and Western Pennsylvania, West Virginia, Maryland, Ohio, Virginia, and North Carolina, with plans to expand into Michigan.
Sheetz, Inc. is being sued for racially discriminating. Evidently Sheetz’s hiring practices include making decisions about whom to hire based on criminal background checks, reports Amber Duke in The Spectator.
According to EEOC:
“Sheetz has maintained a longstanding practice of screening all job applicants for records of criminal conviction and then denying them employment based on those records,” a statement from the EEOC says. “The EEOC charges that Sheetz’s hiring practices disproportionately screened out black, Native American/Alaska Native and multiracial applicants.”
On its website, Sheetz explains that as an equal opportunity employer, it doesn’t automatically filter out all job candidates who have a criminal history. Instead, continues Ms. Duke, Sheetz makes “a case-by-case decision based on the details of each candidate’s criminal background.”
(Sheetz is) an equal opportunity employer, which means (Sheetz, Inc. doesn’t) automatically filter out all job candidates who have a criminal history. Instead, (the company makes) a case-by-case decision based on the details of each candidate’s criminal background.
The EEOC’s lawsuit makes clear, though, that no matter how Sheetz makes its hiring decisions for people with a criminal history, they can be accused of disparate impact. They could literally just be screening out murderers, but according to the Biden administration, that’s no bueno because that policy has a disparate impact on racial minorities. And if we take the EEOC’s premise that the criminal justice system is racist, and that’s the only reason racial minorities commit disproportionately more crimes than whites, why on Earth should Sheetz — a gas station! — be responsible for remedying those wrongs and risking the safety of their other employees and customers?
Sadly, for business owners, this is not the only rule coming out of the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC)
… in April, the agency published its final guidance regarding how workplaces have to treat transgender employees under anti-discrimination law. Many conservatives warned in 2020 that the Bostock decision, which found that Title VII protects against discrimination based on sexual orientation and gender identity, would render some pretty bad outcomes.
Sure enough, the new EEOC guidance finds that employers may be guilty of harassment if they repeatedly misgender trans employees or “deny access to a bathroom or other sex-segregated facility consistent with the individual’s gender identity.” What this means in practice is that a business cannot have sex-segregated bathrooms; a man who identifies as a woman must be allowed to use the women’s bathroom, even if it makes actual women feel unsafe or uncomfortable. The rule applies to all federal workers and private businesses with more than fifteen employees.
From the classroom to the boardroom, accuses Ms. Duke, “the Biden administration is trying to force everyone to throw away common sense and abide by its radical views of race and gender.”
The Biden administration is also fielding a legal challenge against the Department of Education’s changes to Title IX rules, which similarly forces public schools to avoid “discrimination” against transgender students by giving males access to female locker rooms, showers, bathrooms, dorms and other traditionally sex-segregated spaces.
If you’re willing to fight for Main Street America, click here to sign up for the Richardcyoung.com free weekly email.
