Staffing Agency Refused to Refer Women for Laborer Jobs for Three Years — It Paid $150,000 to a Class of Female Applicants

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A staffing agency built to match people with work is being accused of doing the opposite for a long stretch of time — quietly shutting women out of certain jobs before they ever had a chance to show up and do them.

WorkSmart, Inc., a staffing agency based in Greenville, South Carolina, agreed to pay $150,000 to a class of female applicants and provide other relief to settle a federal sex discrimination lawsuit brought by the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. The details are laid out in the EEOC’s announcement.

A “no women” request, and a staffing company that went along

In the EEOC’s lawsuit, the core allegation is blunt: a client operating a facility told WorkSmart it would only accept male laborers. Instead of pushing back or treating that instruction as illegal, the agency is accused of complying.

That compliance, the EEOC said, took the form of failing to hire or refer qualified women for laborer positions at that facility. In other words, the barrier wasn’t a bad interview, a failed background check, or a lack of experience — it was being filtered out because of sex before the job match ever happened.

For people relying on staffing agencies to get a foot in the door, that kind of gatekeeping can be invisible. Applicants may never know why calls don’t come back, why a “we’ll keep you in mind” turns into nothing, or why a job that looks like a fit somehow never becomes available.

Three years of alleged exclusion

The timeframe alleged in the lawsuit is long enough to feel like a system, not a one-off mistake. The EEOC said the discrimination occurred from Aug. 1, 2020, to Aug. 8, 2023.

That matters because staffing work often cycles quickly: new openings, new shifts, new crews. If the EEOC’s allegations are accurate, women who could have been placed into laborer roles over and over again were instead cut out for years — losing wages, experience, and momentum that can come from steady job placements.

The case was filed as EEOC v. WorkSmart Staffing, LLC, Case No. 4:25-cv-01659, in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Alabama. The EEOC said it filed suit after first attempting to resolve the matter through its administrative conciliation process, a step the agency typically takes before heading to court.

Title VII doesn’t let staffing agencies “blame the client”

One of the clearest points in the EEOC’s announcement is that staffing agencies don’t get a pass just because the discriminatory idea originated with someone else. The alleged instruction may have come from a client, but the staffing firm is still responsible for what it does with that instruction.

“Staffing agencies should not comply with discriminatory requests from their clients,” said Marsha Rucker, regional attorney for the EEOC’s Birmingham District. “Federal law clearly prohibits sex-based discrimination in the workplace and staffing agencies are not exempt from compliance with Title VII.”

The EEOC framed the allegations as a violation of Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, the federal law that bars employment discrimination based on sex. Acting EEOC Birmingham District Director Linda Sales-Long reinforced the same message: “Employers should remember that Title VII prohibits refusing to hire or assign a worker because of their sex. A staffing agency can also violate Title VII if it complies with a client’s request that is based on unlawful discrimination.”

The practical implication is simple: if you’re the middleman in the hiring pipeline, you’re still on the hook for keeping that pipeline legal.

The settlement: money for affected women, plus other changes

WorkSmart agreed to pay $150,000 to a class of female employees — described by the EEOC as a class of aggrieved females — and to provide “other relief” as part of the settlement.

The EEOC announcement doesn’t spell out how many women are in the class, how the money will be divided, or what the non-monetary relief requires. But the structure signals that the resolution wasn’t limited to a check; it also included steps meant to address the underlying conduct that led to the lawsuit.

Even without the fine print, the settlement amount puts a price tag on what the agency says happened: years of women being kept out of laborer roles not because they couldn’t do the work, but because they were never given the chance.

What people tend to focus on in cases like this

When discrimination allegations involve staffing agencies, the detail that grabs people is often the behind-the-scenes part: who said what, and whether it was written down. A client’s “only send men” demand can be delivered as an email, a text, a casual phone call, or a running expectation that everyone “just knows.” The difference matters, because documentation can turn a rumor into evidence.

There’s also the question of how women were screened out in practice. Was it a keyword note in a system? A recruiter’s script? A policy that steered women to other assignments while keeping one site all-male? Those mechanics are the kinds of nuts-and-bolts details workers fixate on, because they’re the difference between an isolated bad actor and a repeatable company process.

And for workers on the outside looking in, the most practical lesson is usually about paper trails: keep applications, messages, and job postings; write down dates; and save anything that shows you were available and qualified for the role you didn’t get. In staffing work, where conversations move fast and jobs fill quickly, the record is often the only thing that slows the story down enough to prove what happened.

The agency behind the case, and the region it covers

The lawsuit was handled through the EEOC’s Birmingham District, which has jurisdiction over Alabama, Mississippi (except 17 northern counties), and the Florida Panhandle. The case itself landed in federal court in Alabama, even though WorkSmart is headquartered in South Carolina and provides placement services across the southeastern U.S.

The EEOC emphasized its role as the federal agency authorized to investigate and litigate against private-sector employers for violations of federal employment discrimination laws. For public-sector employers, it shares jurisdiction with the U.S. Department of Justice’s Civil Rights Division.

WorkSmart’s settlement closes this particular lawsuit, but the underlying message is pointed: if a client asks for discrimination dressed up as a “preference,” the staffing agency is expected to say no — and to keep the job pipeline open to qualified workers, regardless of sex.