Moms need not apply? NJ woman says she was victim of discrimination against mothers

A young mother from New Jersey said she was shocked when she inquired about bartending jobs at a popular restaurant, only to hear the venue preferred to hire “people without children.”

Idelbel Colon, the job seeker, shared text messages with the NBC New York I-Team that appear to show someone from The Lobby, a sports-themed bar and restaurant in Elizabeth, excluding parents from employment consideration.

“Wanted to see if you still had openings for bartenders?” Colon wrote back in March.

In response, Terry Gonzalez, a former manager at the Lobby wrote back, “I Just hired 3 and I’m good for the moment. We are also looking to hire people without children.”

According to the text messages, Gonzalez further explained that the restaurant “had just let go two girls with kids because they kept getting sick.”

“This is discrimination,” Colon said. “There is no way for him to just say he doesn’t want to hire women with children.”

Colon said she had previously worked at The Lobby several years before having children. She conceded that Gonzalez once fired her, but later re-hired her to work at a sister sports bar in Newark. That job, too, was awarded before she gave birth.

The Lobby declined to answer questions about how hiring decisions are made at the company, instead issuing a statement from its legal representative, the Hatfield Schwartz Law Group. That statement distanced the company from Terry Gonzalez, calling him a “former” manager and suggesting he had no authority to make hiring decisions.

“The Lobby employs a diverse workforce and prides itself on providing a welcoming environment to all,” the statement read. “This was an informal text exchange between a former employee and a former manager. The views expressed do not represent those of The Lobby.”

The statement did not detail when Gonzalez departed his job as a manager and did not address a screenshot Colon said she captured on March 6, 2024, showing Gonzalez advertising job openings at the Lobby on his personal Instagram page.

The I-Team reached out to Terry Gonzalez for comment, but did not hear back.

Some states, including New York, explicitly ban employers from excluding people from job consideration because they are parents. Though New Jersey law does not specifically make it illegal for employers to discriminate based on what is known as “familial status,” the state’s Division on Civil Rights, a part of the attorney general’s Office, said parents are often members of other protected classes.

For example, bias against people with children could be considered as having a “disparate impact” on people who are in their 30s and 40s — and thus be targeted for enforcement under the prohibition on age discrimination.

Just this week, the Division on Civil Rights proposed adopting new language that clarifies how the state can penalize employers and landlords for business conduct that isn’t expressly prohibited by the Law Against Discrimination, but nevertheless tends to put a bigger burden on one or several protected classes.

“It’s important to understand that a policy or practice doesn’t need malicious intent to have a harmful impact,” said Attorney General Matt Platkin. “We no longer live in a time where ‘I meant well’ or ‘I didn’t think’ are accepted excuses for denying equal opportunity to anyone.”

David Lopez, a Rutgers Law School professor who formerly served as General Counsel to the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, said employers who exclude mothers from hiring consideration might also be committing sex discrimination.

“What the employer community needs to understand is that they can’t engage in stereotyping against women,” Lopez said. “Federal and state law both prohibit sex discrimination, so if an employer refuses to hire women because they have children — and does not refuse to hire men — that would be sex discrimination.”

Colon has initiated the process of filing equal employment opportunity complaints with the state and federal government. She said she wants customers of The Lobby to consider the fact that last month the restaurant publicized a Mother’s Day brunch, just weeks after she was told the venue preferred not to hire mothers of children.

“I think it’s just ironic that they would promote a Mother’s Day brunch,” Colon said