Hotel Magnate Hit With Another Racial Bias Suit

Hotel magnate Ian Schrager’s new luxury hotel in San Francisco has been hit with a racial bias lawsuit one year after he paid $1.08 million to settle charges that he fired “ethnic” employees to hire “cool-looking” white people at his Los Angeles hotel.

The suit, filed Thursday in San Francisco Superior Court, charges Schrager’s Clift Hotel with terminating a valet parking service because its black and Asian employees did not fit the hotel’s image, lawyer R. Stephen Goldstein said Friday. “The only difference between who they are and the new parking service is that my guys are of various ethnic backgrounds and the other guys are white,” he said.

A spokesman for Ian Schrager Hotels in New York called the suit “outrageous” and said it smacked of opportunism following the Los Angeles case.