The Staffing Agency Took a Client's 'Men Only' Order and Stopped Referring Women — Then the EEOC Made WorkSmart Pay $150,000

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A staffing agency’s job is to connect people to work, not to decide who gets a shot based on somebody else’s prejudice. But that’s the kind of mess the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission says happened with WorkSmart, Inc., a staffing company based in Greenville, South Carolina that places workers across the Southeast.

In a press release posted by the EEOC, the agency announced a settlement requiring WorkSmart to pay $150,000 to a class of female workers and provide other relief after a federal sex discrimination lawsuit. The details are laid out in the original post, and they’re the sort of details that make you wonder how anyone thought this was going to end well.

Because the allegation is simple and blunt: a client said “men only,” and the staffing agency went along with it. If you’ve been around job sites, warehouses, or manufacturing facilities, you’ve heard the quieter version of that sentiment before. What you don’t usually see is someone putting it into practice for years like it’s normal.

What the EEOC says happened

According to the EEOC’s lawsuit, from Aug. 1, 2020, to Aug. 8, 2023, WorkSmart failed to hire or refer a class of aggrieved females for laborer positions at a facility run by one of its clients because of their sex. The complaint says the client told WorkSmart it would only accept male laborers at that facility. The EEOC says WorkSmart complied by not referring qualified female candidates.

That timeline matters because it wasn’t a one-off misunderstanding or a single supervisor making a bad call on a hectic morning. The agency alleges this practice ran over a multi-year stretch. If those allegations are accurate, that’s a long time to keep choosing the easy path instead of the lawful one.

Why “the client asked for it” doesn’t hold up

A lot of people in staffing hear clients make requests that sound practical on the surface. “We need someone who can lift,” “we need someone who can work nights,” “we need someone with a clean record,” and so on. Some requests are legitimate job qualifications, some are sloppy shortcuts, and some are flat-out illegal.

The EEOC’s position here is plain: staffing agencies should not comply with discriminatory requests from their clients. The press release includes a statement from Marsha Rucker, regional attorney for the EEOC’s Birmingham District, warning that federal law prohibits sex-based discrimination and staffing agencies aren’t exempt from Title VII. Translation: you don’t get to outsource your conscience to the customer, and you don’t get to hide behind “we were just following orders.”

The law the EEOC says was broken

The EEOC says the alleged conduct violates Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which prohibits discrimination based on sex. In everyday terms, that means a company can’t refuse to hire, assign, or refer someone because they’re a woman. The rule doesn’t change just because the job is physical, gritty, or traditionally male.

Acting EEOC Birmingham District Director Linda Sales-Long also addressed the staffing angle directly, saying employers should remember Title VII prohibits refusing to hire or assign a worker because of their sex, and that a staffing agency can violate Title VII if it complies with a client’s unlawful request. That last part is the trap plenty of businesses fall into. They think liability belongs to the end client, and the middleman walks clean.

The settlement: $150,000 and “other relief”

WorkSmart agreed to pay $150,000 to a class of female employees to settle the lawsuit, along with other relief described generally in the EEOC announcement. The press release doesn’t spell out the full list of non-monetary terms, but it makes clear the payment is intended for the women the EEOC says were affected.

The case name included in the announcement is EEOC v. WorkSmart Staffing, LLC, Case No. 4:25-cv-01659, filed in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Alabama. The EEOC said it filed suit after first trying to reach a pre-litigation settlement through its administrative conciliation process. That tells you the agency didn’t start with a courtroom fight. It started with the usual attempt to resolve the matter before litigation.

How these decisions happen inside real workplaces

It’s not hard to imagine how a situation like this gets rationalized in an office that’s measured on speed and fill rates. A client pushes. Somebody on the staffing side doesn’t want to lose the account. A recruiter is told, directly or indirectly, to stop sending women because “they won’t take them anyway.” Before long, it becomes “just how we do it for that site.”

That’s the quiet danger of repeated compromise. Nobody has to announce that they’re building a discriminatory pipeline; it can happen with a few shrugging conversations and a handful of “don’t bother” decisions. But the effect on the women not referred is the same either way: qualified workers lose opportunities because someone decided their sex mattered more than their ability.

What this means for staffing agencies and the companies that use them

For staffing agencies, the warning is obvious: if a client wants illegal discrimination, the correct response isn’t to comply more efficiently. The correct response is to refuse the request, document what happened, and keep your own process clean. If you can’t do that and keep the business, then the business wasn’t worth keeping.

For client companies, there’s a quieter lesson here too. If leadership allows “men only” thinking to linger in corners of the operation, it’s not just a moral problem; it’s a legal and financial one. Even if the discriminatory act is carried out through a third party, the paper trail and the pattern can still surface, and it can still cost real money and reputation.

There’s also a stewardship issue that doesn’t get talked about enough. A business that casually shuts out half the workforce isn’t just being unjust; it’s being shortsighted. Skilled, willing workers are hard to find in plenty of regions and industries. Treating women as automatically unqualified isn’t toughness or tradition; it’s waste.

A simple standard: don’t build systems that shut people out

There are jobs with real physical demands and real safety requirements, and nobody benefits from pretending otherwise. But the clean way to handle that is to define the essential duties and test for them fairly. If lifting, endurance, or specific certifications are required, say so and measure it. That’s different from a blanket “men only” filter that never even gives qualified women the chance to be considered.

The best managers I’ve seen don’t lead by bending their principles to keep a customer happy. They lead by telling the truth early, setting clear expectations, and taking the short-term discomfort to avoid long-term damage. That’s not just good compliance; it’s good character, and it keeps people from being treated like they’re disposable.

WorkSmart’s settlement doesn’t rewrite the past for the women the EEOC says were denied work, but it does put a price on a choice that should’ve been shut down at the first request. If there’s any takeaway worth keeping, it’s this: the pressure to “just go along” shows up in every line of work. A man has to decide ahead of time what he won’t do, because in the moment, the convenient option always sounds reasonable.