The Times Cracker Barrel Was Sued For Disability Discrimination

Cracker Barrel doesn't have the best history with discrimination. The company has a number of darker incidents in its history, including multiple lawsuits for discrimination on the basis of race and sexual orientation. It's not just things like the time Cracker Barrel fired a 73-year-old employee for giving away a corn muffin; there's some dark stuff here. The company's history includes one of the more common forms of discrimination in American life: disability discrimination. 

Roughly one in four Americans has some sort of disability; disability discrimination is one of the leading types in the U.S. But what's interesting about Cracker Barrel, in particular, is that the company has delved into this area more than once in the past decade alone. The company has faced three major incidents over the last 10 years. Two of them were national, class-action suits, while one was a more local problem.

Even by the restaurant industry's lax standards when it comes to combating disability discrimination, Cracker Barrel's track record stands out. In 2014, the company was hit with a class-action lawsuit for failing to provide proper handicapped parking spaces at more than 100 locations nationwide. Having apparently failed to learn its lesson, Cracker Barrel took on a similar lawsuit (this time including issues with sales counters and bathrooms) just a year later. The latter, focused mainly on New Jersey and Pennsylvania, was eventually settled, with the company agreeing to fix all the listed problems within a few years.

Then, in 2018, the company was sued by the EEOC for discriminating against a deaf applicant at a store in Linthicum, Maryland. When the prospective employee showed up to interview for a dishwasher position, he was allegedly told by a visibly uncomfortable store manager that the hiring manager wasn't there — a violation of the company's stated policy that interviews were to be conducted by any available manager. The company eventually settled the case for $15,000.

Interestingly, when it comes to one type of discrimination, Cracker Barrel really has rehabilitated its image — so much so that conservatives are angry. In the 1990s, the company proudly fired gay employees, even commenting to the Los Angeles Times that "... it is perceived to be inconsistent with those [values] of our customer base to continue to employ individuals in our operating units whose sexual preferences fail to demonstrate normal heterosexual values which have been the foundation of families in our society." Translation: "bigots don't like it when we employ gay people, and we want to keep those sweet, sweet homophobia dollars rolling in."

Hilariously, one of Cracker Barrel's most recent controversies was on the same subject, but for the exact opposite reason. In June, the restaurant posted a picture of a rainbow rocking chair outside one of its restaurants — the sort of milquetoast stuff you see all over the place from rainbow capitalism. Online conservatives lost their absolute minds, with one prominent account declaring, "We take no pleasure in reporting that @CrackerBarrel has fallen," a statement that quickly became a meme.