El Dorado will pay $1.3M after EEOC look at whether hiring favored Hispanics

One of Miami’s signature furniture companies will pay $1.3 million as part of a settlement after a federal investigation into whether hiring practices favored Hispanics.

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The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission said in a statement that its investigation “found reasonable cause” that El Dorado Furniture “engaged in a companywide practice of favoring Hispanic applicants for all positions and violated federal law by failing to hire a class of black, white, and other non-Hispanic applicants from November 2022 through February 2026.”

That would violate the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which prohibits discrimination based on race and national origin, according to tje EEOC.

El Dorado Vice President and Chief Financial Officer Jesús R. Capó said via email to the Miami Herald: “Hiring based on qualifications, without regard to race, is fundamental to who we are. We expect everyone involved in recruiting and hiring to follow our equal employment opportunity policies. We did not wait for the process to end before acting. During the investigation, we began reviewing and strengthening our recruitment and hiring practices.”

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Capó’s also said El Dorado cooperated fully with the federal agency.

Settling the issue through the EEOC’s pre-litigation conciliation process ends the matter before the federal agency files a federal lawsuit on behalf of the applicants. Because it ended in a settlement before any legal documents were filed in a federal court, there’s no public record stating the size of the affected group. The EEOC refused to expand on its news release, which didn’t include the number of affected job applicants.

Along with the $1.3 million to the job applicants, the EEOC said El Dorado “agreed to revise its hiring policies and guidelines; maintain anti-discrimination policies; train all employees involved in recruiting or hiring on discrimination annually; and provide other non-monetary relief to prevent discriminatory hiring from occurring in the future.”

Of El Dorado’s 19 stores in Florida, eight are in Miami-Dade County, three are in Broward County, two are in Palm Beach County; two in Fort Myers; one each in Naples, Altamonte Springs, St. Petersburg and Lutz. The main office is at the location of the Miami Gardens showroom, 4200 NW 167th St.

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