ST. LOUIS (LN) — A federal magistrate judge on Monday refused to dismiss the EEOC's Title VII lawsuit against Miller's Grill, Inc., rejecting the Missouri restaurant company's argument that the agency's complaint was too vague to survive and that its charging party had blown the deadline to file a discrimination charge.
The EEOC sued Miller's Grill in June 2025 on behalf of Lisa Kelley, a server-turned-manager at the company's Washington, Missouri location, alleging that owner Larry Miller subjected her to a sexually hostile work environment, paid her less than her male counterpart, and ultimately pushed her off the schedule after she refused to meet with him privately.
According to the complaint, Miller's conduct began in the fall of 2015 and escalated until, by the end of 2016 or early 2017, his harassment of Kelley occurred almost every shift she worked, which was five or six days a week. Miller allegedly made lewd and sexual comments toward Kelley, asked her for sex, grabbed her around the waist and touched her buttocks on multiple occasions, and told her he wanted to "smack that ass." He also allegedly followed Kelley into the women's bathroom when she tried to get away from him, the complaint states.
On the pay side, the EEOC alleged Miller promoted Kelley to manager in early 2016 but never gave her a salary despite promising one, while paying Jason Thompson — another person Miller hired to work as a manager — as a manager. Some days Miller paid Kelley as a manager and other days as a server, the complaint says, and he also withheld an increased bartender hourly rate when she worked the bar.
Miller's Grill moved to dismiss all three counts — hostile work environment, discriminatory terms and conditions, and retaliation — arguing the EEOC failed to plead that Kelley filed her discrimination charge within the statutory window and that the complaint's allegations were too vague to give the company fair notice of the claims.
U.S. Magistrate Judge Patricia L. Cohen rejected both arguments. On exhaustion, she held that failure to timely file a charge is an affirmative defense the defendant must prove, not a pleading element the EEOC must establish in its complaint. When the agency attached Kelley's charge to its opposition brief, it showed the charge was filed on January 29, 2018 — and because the complaint includes a hostile work environment claim, Cohen held the entire period of alleged harassment dating to fall 2015 could be considered, so long as at least one act fell within the 300-day filing window.
On the notice argument, Cohen held the argument was without merit. The complaint details Miller making lewd comments, requesting sex, grabbing Kelley, following her into the bathroom, texting her to ask her out, demoting her when she rebuffed him, and eventually removing her from the schedule entirely after she refused a private meeting.
The judge also declined to reach two new arguments Miller's Grill raised for the first time in its reply brief — that the complaint failed to allege a continuous series of harassment and that the EEOC's conciliation process should be barred by laches — finding they came too late to be considered.
Kelley filed her charge with the Missouri Commission on Human Rights and the EEOC on January 29, 2018, covering a continuous series of harassing acts and differential treatment from September 2015 through her effective termination in or around October or November 2017.