Sweetie Pie’s settles discrimination lawsuit

A woman who alleged she was fired for not participating in a prayer session at Sweetie Pie’s, a family-run St. Louis restaurant chain made famous by a reality television show, settled her lawsuit the week before trial was set to start.

Trial was set to start Monday. Lawyers filed a motion saying the case had been settled April 23.

The terms of the settlement reached are confidential, attorneys said.

“They came up with enough to settle,” plaintiff’s attorney Jeremy Gogel said Monday.

Defense attorney Veronica Johnson said the case had been “settled for the mutual satisfaction of both parties.”

Former line manager Mary Harris had contended that Linda Montgomery, manager at Sweetie Pie’s “Upper Crust” location, fired her in April 2012 after Harris refused to participate in a mandatory prayer session at the restaurant. Owner Robbie Montgomery, Linda Montgomery’s sister, backed the manager up on the termination in a phone call, according to the lawsuit filed in September 2013 in St. Louis Circuit Court.

The defense alleged Harris had cursed in the restaurant, said Johnson, of Howard & Johnson.

Defense claims included that “there was a disagreement and that there was some profanity in restaurant that other employees and customers could hear and that precipitated plaintiff’s decision to leave work and not return,” Johnson said before the settlement was reached.

Cameras were at the restaurant the day before the incident, but not the day of, Gogel had told a reporter before the two sides reached the agreement.

“Robbie has said this was because of insubordination and she [Harris] wasn’t following the dress code,” Gogel said then.

A plaintiff’s motion said that the defense was entitled to mention that Harris was allegedly disciplined for cursing but asked that “specific curse words and phrases” she allegedly used after refusing to participate in the prayer session be excluded. The motion filed April 21 also asked that “administrative findings in Defendant’s favor” from the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission and the Missouri Commission on Human Rights be excluded from the trial.

The show, “Welcome to Sweetie Pie’s,” airs on OWN and “follows the loud, loving and often singing Montgomery family as they work to expand their empire, one soulful dish at a time,” according to a description on the show’s website. Robbie Montgomery, a former backup singer for Ike and Tina Turner, started Sweetie Pie’s with her son, Tim Norman.

Neither religious references nor profanity are in short supply at the Sweetie Pie’s restaurants, judging by excerpts of episodes online, which have titles including “Too Blessed to be Stressed” and “Jesus, Take the Wheel” and bleeped out words.

Robbie and Linda Montgomery are “good people,” Johnson had said, who are “advocates for the fair treatment of others, especially African-American women.”

Another lawsuit filed by a woman alleging she had been harassed by a male employee at a different Sweetie Pie’s — Sweetie Pie’s at the Mangrove — is pending in U.S. District Court in St. Louis.

The St. Louis Circuit Court case is Mary L. Harris v. Sweetie Pie’s Upper Crust, 1322-CC09492.