Texas Chili’s Sees Black Customer’s Discrimination Suit Revived

A Chili’s restaurant in Rosenberg, Texas, must again face a race discrimination suit by a Black customer whose White fiance was given a table minutes after she had been told that there was a 45-minute wait.

The district court erred by accepting a magistrate judge’s report that said that there was no direct evidence of discrimination and that the customer failed to show that the restaurant’s explanation of what happened was pretext for discrimination and rejecting the suit on that basis, Judge James L. Dennis said Wednesday for the US Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit.

Sharnez Hager was ...