Waitress’ Suit Accuses 2 Posh Restaurants of Sex Bias in Hiring

Two upper crust Los Angeles restaurants were served a sex discrimination lawsuit Thursday by an experienced waitress who claims she was denied employment because of her sex.

The class action suit, which seeks unspecified monetary damages, was filed by Kellye McKinna, 29, against Citrus Restaurant and the Ma Maison Sofitel Hotel and Restaurant.

McKinna, who is seeking her doctorate at UCLA in educational psychology, said that while working for eight months at a less formal, lower-tipping restaurant at the Westside hotel, she “repeatedly requested” a transfer to its posh Ma Maison Restaurant.

However, her requests were denied, she claimed in legal papers filed in Los Angeles Superior Court, because Ma Maison maintains “a policy whereby female waitpersons are prohibited in the formal dining room.”

McKinna, who has waited tables at several other eateries in Los Angeles and Seattle while pursuing her graduate studies, said she has since quit her job at the hotel’s La Cajole restaurant and taken a part-time position as a banquet waitress at the Four Seasons Hotel near Beverly Hills.

In her suit, McKinna claims she also applied for a job at the trendy Citrus in late 1988 but was rejected there too because she is a woman.

“In a city where it is conceivable for a waiter to make up to $50,000 a year,” McKinna said at a lunchtime news conference with her attorney outside Ma Maison, “it is absolutely unfair that women of equal experience and ability have been completely frozen out of almost all of the most expensive restaurants at dinner.

“Women deserve the right to support themselves,” added McKinna, who was dressed in a waitress outfit. “. . . We should not be limited only to positions as coffee shop waitresses.”

Michael Carcieri, controller of Ma Maison Sofitel, acknowledged Thursday that no waitresses work the lucrative evening shift at Ma Maison restaurant. He added that he believed there were some “gray areas with respect to her (McKinna’s) request for a transfer” and that the hotel’s “attorneys are reviewing all of the facts.” Carcieri had no further comment, referring questions to an attorney, Dawn Kitagawa. Kitagawa had no comment.

Jean-Jacques Retourne, general manager of Citrus, denied Thursday that his restaurant has a policy against employing waitresses. The Melrose Avenue restaurant currently has one waitress who works evenings, “and it has nothing to do with the lawsuit,” Retourne said in a telephone interview.

The longtime Los Angeles restaurateur said the city’s finest restaurants have traditionally hired male waiters exclusively “for the simple fact that (women) never came around asking for jobs.”

“We get lawsuits here for the most unbelievable things,” Retourne added. “The only thing that will be gained in this case is by the silly attorney who will get personal fame.”

At the news conference, McKinna’s attorney, Gloria Allred, served copies of the lawsuit to reporters from a silver platter also adorned with an iris in a dark blue vase.

Allred, who has previously filed sex discrimination cases on issues ranging from clothing alteration charges to the failure of a high school student to win a spot on a cheerleading squad because of the size of her breasts, also spoke at the news conference.

‘We believe that many restaurants have hired only men because they think it adds prestige and importance to the restaurant to only employ men at night,” she contended. “Such practices serve only to perpetuate the false notion that women are of no value.”

Allred said many restaurants exclude women by relying on word-of-mouth recruitment by male waiters or by falsely telling women that no positions are available. She called for federal officials to launch their own investigation of the alleged abuses.