Lawsuit Accuses Beauty Giant Sephora Of Discrimination Against Asian-American Women
SAN FRANCISCO (KPIX 5) -- Beauty giant Sephora is accused of some pretty ugly behavior. A new lawsuit accuses the company of discriminating against Asian-American women.
The 26 page lawsuit was filed in a federal court in New York.
Plaintiffs Xiao Xiao, Jiali Chen, Man Xu and Tiantian Zou are suing the company on behalf of other Asian women. They said during a sale on November 6th, Sephora's website crashed.
The cosmetics company said, "…we have identified certain entities who take advantage of promotional opportunities to purchase products in large volume on our website and resell them through other channels."
The plaintiffs said Sephora deleted a number of accounts after the crash, but only those with Chinese or Asian sounding names.
The suit is asking for damages and that points be returned to those four customers reward accounts. The plaintiffs said they want to turn their complaint into a nationwide class-action lawsuit.
In a written statement, Sephora told KPIX 5 they look forward to defending their actions in court, adding "we intend to make very clear that clients from a number of countries around the world have been impacted by a temporary block we needed to place on accounts in order to restore the functionality of our site during a surge of activity by resellers during a promotional event two weeks ago."
Sephora's North American headquarters is located in San Francisco.