A Black former McDonald’s shift manager says he was denied request to avoid shifts with another member of the crew who used racial slurs according to a lawsuit. Anthony Green filed against the company and a franchisee on August 19. Green was told by his manager that his hair was “unprofessional” on a few occasions and that she didn’t like people “outside” of her race, according the lawsuit. The suit says the only reason Green wasn’t fired was that his manager didn’t want him to pull the “Black card.”

Green began working as a shift manager at a McDonald’s restaurant in Ottawa, Kansas, in January 2020 when he was 17-years-old according to Business Insider. Then a month later, he overheard a white employee use the N-word at work according to the lawsuit. Green reported the employee in writing and told his supervisor, who was the location’s general manager. Green then asked not be scheduled at the same time as the other employee going forward.

However, Green continued to be scheduled the same shifts as the employee according to the lawsuit.

“Upon information and belief, [McDonald’s] took no further action regarding disciplining [the employee] or warning him not to engage in further racially harassing behavior,” the lawsuit says.

The worker “continued to repeatedly use racially harassing language,” including “often” calling Green “boy,” per the lawsuit.

The lawsuit says Green talked to the owner of the Ottawa McDonald’s franchise about the employee’s racist language. The franchise owner “took no action” against the language and didn’t alter shift patterns to they didn’t work together, the lawsuit says. Green’s supervisor  says “frequently criticized and demeaned [him] in ways that made him understand that he was being targeted and harassed because of his race,” according to the lawsuit.

The lawsuit says McDonald’s failed to pay Green overtime wages and staff altered his time card “to make it appear as if he had worked fewer hours.”

“This constant racial harassment made working at McDonald’s too stressful for me (or anyone else in my position) to handle, especially because it was apparent that McDonald’s had done nothing to stop this harassment and was not interested in doing so,” Green wrote in a document accompanying the lawsuit. He said that he had had “no choice” but to quit his job in May 2020.

Green says he was seeking back-pay, front-pay, emotional distress damages, punitive damages, and “any other remedy the [Kansas Human Rights] Commission deems appropriate.”

Read more:

The Black Panther Party Free Breakfast for School Children

The Negro Motorist Green Book: Black America’s guide through the Jim Crow era

Mississippi Appendectomy: The decades long practice of sterilizing poor black women