Black Customers File Discrimination Lawsuit Against Waffle House

ATLANTA (AP) -- A group of blacks who claimed they experienced discrimination at Waffle Houses in three Georgia cities have filed a lawsuit in federal court in Atlanta against the restaurant chain. The Georgia cities are Douglasville in suburban Atlanta and in Savannah and Darien on Georgia's coast.

The Georgia lawsuit joins three others filed earlier in North Carolina, Alabama and Virginia against the company -- based in Norcross in suburban Atlanta -- and its franchisees. The restaurants are accused of maintaining a pattern of discrimination and violations of federal civil rights laws among their employees.

The four lawsuits -- along with 20 others filed in six southern states -- allege that servers announced they would NOT serve black customers. The lawsuits claim servers also served unsanitary food to minority patrons, ignored blacks while providing prompt service to whites, directed racial epithets at blacks and became verbally abusive when asked to wait on blacks.

One of the plaintiffs -- 31-year-old Sharon Perry -- says she was required to prepay for her meal at a Waffle House in Savannah. Perry spoke at one of four news conferences scheduled yesterday. The NAACP joined lawsuits in two of the states -- Georgia and Alabama -- and endorsed the others.

Waffle House has about 14-hundred restaurants and franchises in 25 states. The company denies allegations that it fosters an environment of discrimination, saying in a statement today that it has -- quote -- "policies and systems in place to train our associates to treat all customers equally."

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