Another Hash at Denny’s

Is Denny’s ever going to learn? The restaurant chain is facing another complaint of discriminatory treatment three years after paying a record $54 million to settle civil rights lawsuits. Now a lawsuit has been filed alleging that some Asian and Asian American students were unfairly denied service at a Denny’s in Syracuse, N.Y., last April and then were attacked by a crowd while the restaurant’s security guards stood by.

Some of the Syracuse employees involved in the incident had not undergone mandatory training in nondiscriminatory practices as required by the 1994 settlement of class-action suits for refusing to serve black customers. But the Syracuse incident should not have happened under any circumstances.

The Asians and Asian Americans, most of them Syracuse University students, said they were waiting for a table when they noticed that other customers, who were white, were seated ahead of them. When they complained, the students said, the manager told them to leave and had them escorted outside by two security guards, one of whom allegedly shoved a student. In the parking lot, the students said, they were assaulted by a group of white customers while the two security guards, both off-duty Onondaga County sheriff’s deputies, stood by. Two students were knocked unconscious.

Now an independent civil rights monitoring office in Los Angeles, created in 1994 by the Justice Department to investigate discrimination claims against Denny’s, has recommended that the manager and the security guards at the Syracuse restaurant be fired. Denny’s says all of the employees involved in the incident have been dismissed. Maybe this time the lesson will be taken to heart at Denny’s Spartanburg, S.C., headquarters.