Dollar General Faces Federal Employment Complaint Filed in Michigan Court

A federal employment complaint naming both Dolgencorp LLC and Dollar General Corporation as defendants was filed March 5 in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Michigan, docketed as Turner v. Dolgencorp LLC, case no. 2:26-cv-10749. The specific allegations in the Turner complaint were not available at press time, but the filing adds to a substantial record of federal employment litigation the company has accumulated across multiple jurisdictions.

The new Michigan case arrives as Dollar General's operating subsidiary, Dolgencorp LLC, already faces separate EEOC enforcement action on disability grounds. The EEOC's St. Louis District Office charged that Dolgencorp "failed to accommodate an employee with disabilities, forced her to quit when she called in sick, and retaliated against her for reporting the conduct." That suit was filed independently of the Turner matter and involves a distinct set of facts.

A separate EEOC action filed in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Oklahoma, Civil Action No. 6:21-cv-00295, alleges violations of the Age Discrimination in Employment Act. In that case, the EEOC charged that a regional director called subordinate district managers "Grumpy Old Men" and expressed a desire for a "Millennial Team," then terminated or constructively discharged managers who spoke up about the harassment. The ADEA protects workers 40 and older from age-based harassment and retaliation. The EEOC is seeking monetary relief for the district managers who lost their jobs, an order prohibiting future age harassment and retaliation, and other relief.

The pattern reaches back further than recent filings. A Capital & Main review of court filings found that during the tenure of a prior company executive identified as Perdue, 2,494 individual employment cases were filed against Dollar General, charging the company with gender and racial discrimination, rampant wage theft, and failure to provide medical leave, among other violations. In the four years before Perdue took the helm, 76 cases had been filed in federal court, a figure the Capital & Main review characterized as representing a more than 30-fold increase under his leadership. The company also settled an EEOC suit alleging discrimination against Black applicants for $6 million.

Individual cases from that period illustrate the scope of allegations. Catricea Davis, an African American store manager, filed suit in 2007 in the Federal District Court for the Northern District of Illinois Eastern Division, alleging she was called a racist epithet by four white employees she supervised and that her calls to a corporate hotline and a district manager failed to remedy the situation. That same year, Rachel Armington, a cashier at a Florida Dollar General store, sued in U.S. District Court in Jacksonville, alleging that her requests to sit in a chair during a difficult pregnancy went unheeded.

Dolgencorp and Dollar General Corporation had not issued a public response to the Turner filing as of publication. The Turner complaint text, including its causes of action and relief sought, remains to be obtained from the Eastern District of Michigan docket.