The American Civil Liberties Union of New Mexico has filed charges against Whole Food Markets for allegedly discriminating against its Spanish-speaking employees.
The charges, filed with the NM Human Rights Bureau, stem from an incident at an Albuquerque Whole Foods store last month. Two employees, Lupe Gonzalez and Bryan Baldizan, were reprimanded and suspended for speaking Spanish and challenging the English-only policy.
Gonzalez has been with Whole Foods for 13-years and Baldizan for 18-months.
The grocery chain had an English-only policy in place nationwide at the time which allows Spanish to be spoken only to converse with a Spanish-speaking customer. Once the incident and policy became public knowledge Latino organizations were in an uproar especially in NM where Spanish was once the native language. The Austin, Texas based retailer then revised its English-only policy. The new rules ask employees who can speak English to "please speak with them in English, unless requested otherwise by the customer."
Gonzalez and Baldizan claim they are still being prevented from speaking Spanish. The ACLU maintains that the English-only rule is actually a "No Spanish" policy and when enforced only applied to the Spanish-speaking employees and not for example to the Asian employees at the store.
"It is illegal for employers to single out Spanish speaking employees for unfair treatment," said ACLU of New Mexico Executive Director Peter Simonson. "Discriminating against an employee for speaking Spanish, a language that has been widely spoken here for nearly five-hundred years, is an affront to our state's history, culture and values."
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