- Michael Peaster, a Black McDonald's security executive, is suing the chain and its CEO.
- Peaster, a 35-year company veteran, was fired for performing his job poorly, McDonald's said.
As McDonald's vice president of global safety, security, and intelligence, Michael Peaster was responsible for overseeing the personal security of CEO Chris Kempczinski.
Yet according to a racial-discrimination lawsuit that Peaster filed this month, the CEO ignored the 35-year McDonald's veteran for the better part of a year.
McDonald's said it fired Peaster last month for performing his job poorly. But in the lawsuit, the Black executive said he was let go as part of a monthslong effort to oust him after he criticized Kempczinski in a 2021 town-hall meeting. The meeting was held to discuss Kempczinski's controversial 2021 text, in which he blamed the parents of two children who were fatally shot. He was widely criticized for the text message.
The CEO sent the text to Chicago's mayor, Lori Lightfoot, shortly after the shooting of 7-year-old Jaslyn Adams at a Chicago-area McDonald's in April 2021. The CEO wrote: "p.s. tragic shootings in last week, both at our restaurant yesterday and with Adam Toldeo. With both, the parents failed those kids which I know is something you can't say. Even harder to fix."
When the media uncovered the texts about six months later, a backlash against the CEO erupted as critics called his text ignorant and racist. The CEO responded that his text "lacked the empathy and compassion I feel for these families."
Peaster said Kempczinski held a town-hall meeting to discuss the texts after they were published. During the meeting, Peaster challenged Kempczinski. He said he believed the CEO was in "denial as to why many people believed his texts were racist and were offended," according to the suit.
The lawsuit said these were Peaster's words or the substance of his words: "Think about the kids who are in their homes and playing on playgrounds who are killed by stray bullets. We cannot broad brush the violence issues in Chicago to make it appear that all parents who have children who are victims to gun violence are bad parents. We have to have empathy and compassion for the majority of families who live in tough communities that work hard to provide for their family and keep them safe."
Peaster's comments drew applause, according to the suit.
The lawsuit said Peaster was not immediately retaliated against or punished for his comments. But he felt discriminated against and ostracized in the year leading up to his dismissal, effective December 31, according to the suit. The suit described a year in which Kempczinski overtly treated Peaster like an "invisible officer."
In 2022, Kempczinski refused to meet with Peaster to discuss his security needs and banned him from flying with him on the company's private jet during a business trip to Mexico City and São Paulo, the suit said. During the trip, Peaster "was relegated to fly commercial" and was later criticized for making the CEO feel "unsafe in these cities."
"This termination was discriminatory against Michael Peaster because of his race," the suit said. "It was retaliatory against Michael Peaster based on his respectful but legitimate contradiction of Kempczinski on the subject of race."
McDonald's said Peaster's timeline runs "counter to the facts in this case." The company said Peaster was a "senior director" when he made those town-hall comments and was promoted to vice president two months later in January 2022.
"The claims run completely afoul of the facts and the values our leadership team and company uphold," the company said in a statement. "Mr. Peaster was promoted in January 2022; however, he was subsequently terminated due to serious performance issues in his expanded role. To suggest that his termination was based on retaliation or anything other than performance lapses is to completely ignore the facts. We intend to vigorously defend against this lawsuit and to continue to lead with our values."
A representative for Peaster told Insider via email: "Michael Peaster had the same job since 2010. In 2022 he was restored to officer-level position, which had been in the works before the town hall."
This isn't the first time McDonald's, under Kempczinski, has been accused of racial discrimination.
In January 2020, two Black McDonald's executives, Vicki Guster-Hines and Domineca Neal, filed a discrimination lawsuit against McDonald's. The suit said that the company, under former CEO Steve Easterbrook and later Kempczinski, cost them millions of dollars combined in lost pay and benefits, in addition to suffering "emotional distress, humiliation and related physical suffering." The suit is in the discovery stage, according to a representative from Carmen D. Caruso Law Firm, which is representing the plaintiffs, as well as Peaster. McDonald's said in 2020 that it disagreed with characterizations in the complaint.
In August 2020, 52 Black ex-franchisees filed a $1 billion racial-discrimination lawsuit against McDonald's. The operators accused the burger chain of misleading them about the economic opportunities of owning restaurants and purposely placing them in stores in "crime-ridden" neighborhoods with underperforming sales, according to the suit.
McDonald's disputed the claims in the suit, which was dismissed by a judge in September. The plaintiffs have since filed an amended complaint.
"At every turn, we have been resolute: McDonald's did not discriminate against the plaintiffs, and we are confident that should the case proceed, the evidence will prove that," the company said in a statement. "Despite the fact that this is now their third attempt, plaintiffs have not addressed the fatal flaws that led the court to dismiss the prior complaint. Now, even with two separate filings, plaintiffs' allegations continue to be unfounded, and both Second Amended Complaints should similarly be dismissed in their entirety because they do not state a viable claim."
In 2020, the company said in response to the suit: "Not only do we categorically deny the allegations that these franchisees were unable to succeed because of any form of discrimination by McDonald's, we are confident that the facts will show how committed we are to the diversity and equal opportunity of the McDonald's System, including across our franchisees, suppliers and employees."
Correction: December 20, 2022 - An earlier version of this article misstated the status of the $1 billion racial-discrimination lawsuit against McDonald's. The lawsuit has been dismissed, but the plaintiffs have since filed an amended complaint.