Walmart settles a lawsuit that claims it passed a female worker for promotion because she had young children at home

• Walmart is set to pay a former worker $60,000 to settle claims it didn't promote her because she had young children.
• The company didn't hire her for a manager role because she had children at home, the EEOC said.

Walmart is set to pay a former female worker $60,000 to settle a lawsuit claiming it turned down her request for promotion because she had young children at home.

The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission filed the lawsuit against Walmart in February 2022, alleging that the retailer discriminated against the former worker on the basis of sex by not promoting her because of "stereotypes about women with small children at home."

The EEOC said that the employee went on maternity leave from October 2017 to January 2018. When she returned to her job at the retailer's store in Ottumwa, Iowa, she applied to be a manager in its pet department. She had been encouraged by other managers to apply and she passed the manager's test, the EEOC said.

But the worker wasn't chosen for the role, despite having at least three years more experience at Walmart than the candidate who was selected in her place, the EEOC said. When the worker asked for feedback she was told that the company didn't think she wanted to stay there long-term because she had small children at home, per the lawsuit.

The EEOC also accused Walmart of discrimination on the basis of race for providing the worker, who is Black, with an "unsanitary storage closet" for expressing breast milk, which it said was "cluttered and dirty" with dead bugs on the floor.

The storage closet was inferior to the clean office space it provided to a white employee for the same purpose, the EEOC said.

In a consent decree signed January 10, Walmart agreed to pay the former worker $30,000 in back pay and a further $30,000 in compensatory damages to settle the claims, without admitting to wrongdoing. The EEOC filed the lawsuit after it failed to reach a conciliation agreement with the Arkansas-based retailer.

Business Insider has contacted Walmart for comment.