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A Houston hotel is facing a lawsuit alleging that a Black woman was discriminated against in its restaurant, KHOU 11 reports.
According to a lawsuit filed by Blessing Nwosu, a staff worker at Bloom and Bee, a restaurant in the Post Oak Hotel, came up behind her and put a shawl over her outfit. The worker allegedly forced Nwosu to wear the shawl because her shoulders were showing.
"Everybody was looking, I feel like I was being made a spectacle and it was embarrassing," Nwosu said Saturday (October 21) while speaking outside the Post Oak Hotel.
Nwosu was wearing a red dress during the May incident and said other people in the restaurant were wearing spaghetti straps thinner than hers.
In a statement, the Post Oak Hotel denied the lawsuit's allegations.
“The Post Oak attracts hotel patrons from all over the world and is one of the most diverse properties in Houston both in employees and in its customer base," the statement reads.“The plaintiff entered one of the hotel’s restaurants for lunch and approached the hostess stand. The hostess noticed on her own that plaintiff was clearly overexposed in her dress and discreetly and respectfully offered her a shawl for coverage. The hostess is a minority and denies any discriminating nature towards the plaintiff and simply wanted plaintiff to cover up."
Nwosu's attorney, Randall Kallinen, is also representing a man in a separate discrimination lawsuit against the hotel. The Post Oak described Kallinen as an "opportunistic lawyer" who is "looking for 15 minutes of fame."
“This is nothing more than a frivolous lawsuit filed by an opportunistic lawyer looking for 15 minutes of fame and a pot of gold. It's a lot cheaper these days to use the media for free publicity in lieu of paying for billboards or television advertising," the hotel said in its statement.
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