Employer allegedly changed the locks — workers used a gas station as their restroom
The EEOC is suing a Memphis cemetery operator for allegedly barring Black workers from restrooms and retaliating against a supervisor who refused to silence them.
In a case filed on February 6, 2026, the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission accuses StoneMor GP, LLC — also operating as Everstory Partners — of race discrimination and retaliation at its Whitten Road funeral home and cemetery in Memphis, Tennessee. The allegations, which have not been proven in court, read like a case study in how workplace facility access and management response to internal complaints can go badly wrong.
At the center of the dispute are three Black groundskeeping employees: Demarcus Benson, a supervisor promoted several times in less than five years from temporary staff to a full-time supervisor, and two members of his crew, Louis Walker and Demetric Brownlee. Their work included maintaining the grounds, laying headstones, burying bodies and backfilling graves.
According to the EEOC, on or around May 5, 2022, Benson arrived at work to find a new lock on the door he usually used to enter the building. Area maintenance director Heath Fairfax and funeral director/funeral-home manager Brad Shooks, both White, allegedly told Benson the lock was part of a new protocol barring his crew from entering the facility or using its restrooms and breakrooms. No exterior restroom was provided. For roughly 10 days, the three men allegedly relied on their personal vehicles for breaks and a neighboring gas station for a restroom. Benson, though not personally barred as a supervisor, reportedly refused to use the building's facilities in solidarity with his crew.
The EEOC further alleges that a preferred restroom and breakroom — secured by a combination code lock — was reserved for executive management, all White, and certain non-executive professional-level White female employees. Similarly situated Black professional staff, including former cemetery administrator Sherrice Cates, were allegedly denied the code without explanation and without any official written policy justifying the restriction.
After repeated complaints, management designated a first-floor single-occupancy restroom foyer accessible only through a backdoor. Walker escalated his concerns to StoneMor's corporate office, then located in Bensalem, Pennsylvania, calling the arrangement inhospitable and unhygienic. The company eventually assigned another interior room, but the EEOC says Black employees were never granted access to the preferred facility.
The retaliation claim is equally striking. The EEOC alleges that after Walker sought information about filing a discrimination charge, Fairfax called Benson into a meeting — with general manager William High, also White, on speakerphone — and ordered him to stop Walker from contacting the agency. According to the filing, Fairfax threatened to fire Benson if Walker followed through.
Walker contacted the EEOC. Within days, StoneMor suspended Benson, citing a previously uninvestigated wrongful burial that allegedly occurred under Fairfax's own supervision. On May 25, 2022, Benson was terminated — a move the EEOC says reversed the company's own practice of not disciplining supervisors for burial errors that happened on someone else's watch.
The agency is seeking a permanent injunction, policy reforms, back pay, compensatory and punitive damages, and a jury trial. No final determination has been made.
For HR leaders, the case is a pointed reminder: how an organization manages facility access, handles discrimination complaints and treats the supervisors caught in between can quickly become a federal matter.
