American Construction Workers Reported Anti-American Slurs From Coworkers — the Company Fired at Least One of the Complainants, the EEOC Alleged

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On a jobsite, the line between “just work it out” and “this is harassment” can get blurry fast—until someone starts losing the ability to do their job and then, suddenly, their paycheck. That’s the picture the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission painted in a new lawsuit against Advanced Technology Group, Inc., a project-based construction services company that works jobsites nationwide.

In the agency’s announcement, the EEOC says American workers at ATG’s Rio Rancho, New Mexico location were targeted with anti-American slurs by Mexican coworkers, and that at least one employee was fired after he complained about it.

It wasn’t just words, the EEOC says

The lawsuit centers on events the EEOC says began around June 2023. According to the agency, at least two American employees were subjected to anti-American slurs from Mexican coworkers on the Rio Rancho jobsite.

But the alleged behavior didn’t stop at insults. The EEOC says coworkers took one American employee’s tools without permission, which interfered with his ability to work. In construction, tools aren’t a minor detail—if they’re gone, the job stops, and the pressure lands on the person who can’t keep pace.

The agency also alleges the employee’s coworkers ignored his directives and derided him because he couldn’t speak Spanish fluently. That detail matters because it frames the claim as national origin harassment, not a routine personality clash or disagreement about tasks.

He complained right away—then kept complaining

One of the strongest themes in the EEOC’s version of events is the speed and persistence of the complaints. The agency says the employee reported the harassment immediately to his direct supervisor.

According to the lawsuit, the supervisor did nothing to address the problem. With no intervention, the EEOC says the harassment continued, and the employee kept raising the issue.

That “nothing changed” stretch is where workplace disputes often either cool off or explode. The EEOC’s allegation is that the lack of action didn’t just fail to fix things—it effectively gave the behavior room to continue.

Going “above his head” allegedly triggered the firing

After repeated complaints went nowhere, the employee tried a different route. The EEOC says that on July 17, 2023, he complained to a different supervisor after his direct supervisor continued to do nothing.

The next day, the EEOC alleges, the direct supervisor fired him. The reason, the agency says, was retaliation for complaining “above [the direct supervisor’s] head.”

If the EEOC proves that timeline in court, it’s the kind of sequence that juries tend to understand quickly: report harassment, get ignored, escalate the complaint, lose your job. Even before the court gets to the underlying slurs and conduct, the agency is making a clear case that speaking up is what cost at least one worker his employment.

The legal hook: national origin discrimination and retaliation

The EEOC says the alleged conduct violates Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which prohibits discrimination based on national origin. The agency explicitly notes that includes discrimination based on American national origin, a point it leaned into heavily in its public statements.

“Discrimination against American workers is unconscionable,” EEOC Chair Andrea R. Lucas said in the release. “The EEOC is here to protect all workers from anti-American bias. Nothing justifies illegal national origin discrimination, and we will vigorously enforce federal laws to restore dignity to the American worker.”

The agency also emphasized employer responsibility, with EEOC Phoenix Regional Attorney Mary Jo O’Neill saying employers have a duty to prevent and stop harassment based on national origin and are required to investigate complaints and take prompt action to stop harassment.

Retaliation is its own charge, not a footnote. “Retaliation against workers who complain about national origin harassment is just as clearly a violation of federal law as the harassment itself,” Phoenix District Director Melinda Caraballo said.

How this reached court

The EEOC filed the case as EEOC v. ATG, Case No. 1:26-cv-01501-KK-SCY, in U.S. District Court for the District of New Mexico. The agency says it tried to resolve the dispute before filing through its administrative conciliation process, but ultimately moved forward with litigation.

The press release describes ATG as a project-based construction services company based in Oregon with jobsites nationwide. That matters because it suggests the alleged breakdown wasn’t happening in a tiny, isolated shop with no formal structure—it was happening inside a company working across multiple states, where supervisors are expected to know how to respond when a harassment complaint hits their desk.

The agency also pointed readers to its resources on national origin discrimination and highlighted “Project Firewall,” an effort the EEOC says it is working on with the Department of Labor to combat illegal national origin discrimination, “particularly against American workers.”

What people tend to focus on in cases like this

The EEOC’s allegations line up with what workers and advocates often stress in real time: documentation and a clear complaint trail. Here, the agency is already describing a chain of reports—an immediate complaint to a direct supervisor, repeated complaints when nothing changed, and then a final escalation to another supervisor the day before the firing.

In workplace retaliation claims, that kind of timeline can become the backbone of the case. It’s practical, too. When a supervisor “does nothing,” the next steps usually become about getting the complaint in front of someone who can’t shrug it off—another manager, HR, or an outside agency. The lawsuit suggests the employee tried that, and the EEOC is now arguing that’s exactly what triggered the retaliation.

There’s also a very jobsite-specific angle people tend to latch onto: the tool issue. Allegations that coworkers took tools without permission isn’t just harassment in the social sense; it’s interference with work, and in some environments it can quickly bleed into safety, deadlines, and disciplinary write-ups for the person being undermined.

The case isn’t resolved in this announcement. But the EEOC has drawn a sharp, recognizable outline of what it says happened: slurs, obstruction on the job, ignored complaints, escalation, and then a termination the next day. Now that it’s in federal court, the next chapter will be built out through the litigation process—where the company’s response, the supervisors’ actions, and the paper trail will matter as much as whatever was said on the jobsite.