A former cashier at the Kroger in Atlanta's Edgewood Retail District will receive $75,000 after federal officials found the grocery chain denied her a simple seating accommodation, then quietly stopped putting her on the schedule at all. The settlement resolves a disability discrimination and retaliation lawsuit filed by the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission against The Kroger Co., closing a case that began with a doctor's note asking for a stool.
Court records identify the employee as Portia Taylor, who was hired in March 2023 at the store located at 1225 Caroline Street NE, according to STL.News. Taylor has permanent nerve damage to her lower extremities caused by breast cancer treatments, and per the EEOC, her cashier role required standing continuously through four-and-a-half-hour shift segments with only a single 10-minute break. That standing requirement led to severe leg pain that eventually required emergency room treatment in April 2023, as reported by 11Alive.
A Doctor's Note Met With Rejection
Taylor provided supporting medical documentation when she requested to sit on a stool or chair during her shifts as a disability accommodation. Instead of granting the request, a store manager allegedly told her Kroger did not “do accommodations like that,” promising lighter duty instead, according to a report from HR Dive. Store leadership then stopped scheduling her for shifts entirely, and Kroger ignored her repeated phone calls, telling her that further contact should be handled between her attorney and the company's legal department.
Taylor filed an internal complaint through Kroger's online reporting portal, but the same 11Alive report notes that eight days later, the portal marked the investigation closed without any company representative ever contacting or interviewing her. She informed Kroger that she had filed a formal charge of discrimination with the EEOC in July 2023, and the station's report indicates Kroger never scheduled her to work after that point.
Federal Case Follows Failed Settlement Talks
The EEOC attempted to reach a pre-litigation settlement through administrative conciliation before filing suit, a step the agency typically prioritizes since it secured $528 million for workers through conciliation in fiscal year 2025 alone, out of $660 million in total recoveries nationwide, per HRMorning. When that effort failed, the agency filed EEOC v. The Kroger Co., Case No. 1:25-cv-00272, in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Georgia on January 17, 2025, according to the Civil Rights Litigation Clearinghouse.
The two-year consent decree resolving the case, reached in August 2026, requires Kroger to pay $75,000 to the former cashier and provide other equitable relief. Kroger also agreed to post a workplace notice informing employees of the settlement and their right to be free from workplace discrimination, provide specialized training to store leaders and human resources personnel handling accommodation requests, update its complaint procedures, and give the EEOC periodic reports on how disability accommodation requests are handled going forward, according to the original report from Atlanta Daily World.
Officials Point to Employer Obligations Under the ADA
The Americans with Disabilities Act prohibits disability discrimination and retaliation, and requires employers to provide reasonable accommodations for qualified individuals with disabilities absent undue hardship. EEOC Atlanta District Office officials involved in the case, Darrell E. Graham and Marcus G. Keegan, said employers cannot shirk their legal obligations under the ADA and cannot ignore employees who request disability accommodations or file discrimination complaints, per the Atlanta Daily World account. Federal guidance separately makes clear that blanket no-sitting policies do not override the ADA, since modifying sitting rules is treated as a routine reasonable accommodation absent undue hardship, according to HR Dive.
This is not the first time in 2026 that a Kroger store has faced this exact kind of federal scrutiny. In Kroger's revoked walker case, the EEOC filed a separate lawsuit in Texas alleging a Clear Lake store revoked a checkout attendant's long-approved walker accommodation after a management change and then terminated her. The recurrence of similar allegations at stores in different states points to potential training gaps in how Kroger's regional divisions handle accommodation requests, though the company's own audit plans for store-level compliance remain an open question.
Part of a Broader National Surge in Claims
The Atlanta settlement lands amid a broader climb in federal disability discrimination filings. Disability discrimination charges filed with the EEOC rose to 33,668 in fiscal year 2024, up from 29,160 the year before, according to trend data reported by Gen Re. Nationally, the EEOC received 91,503 total discrimination charges in fiscal year 2025, a 3.4% increase over the prior year, with retaliation remaining the single most common claim cited across all federal enforcement statutes.
The EEOC Atlanta District Office has jurisdiction over Georgia as well as a dozen counties in South Carolina, while the agency overall serves as the sole federal agency authorized to investigate and litigate against private-sector employers for violations of federal employment discrimination laws, sharing jurisdiction with the Department of Justice's Civil Rights Division for public-sector employers. The EEOC says it remains committed to enforcing the ADA and protecting employees' rights against disability discrimination as it continues coordinating the federal government's broader employment antidiscrimination effort.
