Its own policy told staff to report harassment to a manager. The EEOC says managers looked away
A federal agency is suing airline caterer Gate Gourmet, alleging it subjected a worker to sexual harassment and ignored her complaints.
The US Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) filed the lawsuit in federal court in Colorado on August 28, 2026. It accuses Gate Gourmet of creating a hostile work environment - a workplace made abusive by harassment the employer fails to stop - for a female employee, then doing nothing when she raised it.
The company hired the woman in October 2022 to load catering onto trucks and deliver it to planes near Denver International Airport, according to the complaint. New drivers usually learn the job from an experienced mentor. The filing says no one would train her, and that one male driver told her he would not because “[she is] a woman [she] can’t drive the truck.”
The mentor she was eventually given made sexual comments about her body nearly every day, the EEOC alleges. The complaint also alleges he made a comment about her ethnicity, telling her - she is Filipino - that he wanted to “try” an Asian.
After a safety test found she could not reach a control button on the truck - she is about 4 feet 11 inches tall - the company moved her to a helper role, the filing says. The comments did not stop.
What happened after she reported the harassment is central to the EEOC’s case. The employee took her complaints to four different supervisors, according to the filing, and the agency says none of them looked into it. The complaint alleges one manager told her he did not “give a shit”; a supervisor said, “Here we go again,” and ignored her; a second manager mocked her; and a safety and compliance representative gave her “a funny look” and moved on. The company’s own written policy told staff to report harassment to a supervisor or manager, the complaint notes. The agency says no one investigated, interviewed her, or disciplined the co-worker.
The employee eventually recorded the co-worker on her phone to back up her account, the complaint says. Around the same time, in May 2023, she argued with another male worker who, the filing alleges, grabbed her arm and blocked her from leaving the kitchen. The company investigated that incident and found her account “not substantiated,” alleging she had bruised herself to exaggerate it, according to the complaint. She filed a police report.
The company later told her not to come back because she “complains a lot” and had “problems with her coworkers,” the complaint says, and sent a termination letter on July 25, 2023.
The worker filed a charge with the EEOC in October 2023. In March 2026, the agency said it had reason to believe the company broke Title VII of the Civil Rights Act, the federal law banning workplace discrimination, and asked it to settle informally. Gate Gourmet declined, according to the complaint, and the agency sued. The EEOC wants the court to order the company to stop sex discrimination and harassment and to put proper policies in place, and to pay the worker compensation for emotional harm plus punitive damages, in amounts to be decided at trial.
None of the allegations have been tested in court, and no judge has ruled on the claims.
