ROCHESTER, N.Y. — A McDonald's restaurant franchisee whose first restaurant was located in Rochester has filed a federal civil rights suit against the Golden Arches. McDonald's Corporation is disputing Herb Washington's claims of racial discrimination.

Washington filed the suit in U.S. District Court in Ohio. He accuses the company of hypocrisy, claiming in ads to support movements like Black Lives Matter, while squeezing black franchise owners out of business.

What You Need To Know

  • Former Major League Baseball player Herb Washington has filed a federal civil rights suit against McDonalds

  • Washington once ran the largest Black-owned McDonald’s franchise businesses in the nation. Washington once owned 27 restaurants in New York, Pennsylvania, and Ohio

  • Now he's suing the fast food chain for racial discrimination

  • The fast food chain says it will "review the complaint and respond accordingly"

“For 40 years," McDonald's has been moving the goalposts,” said Washington. “Now they want to destroy me.”

Herb Washington once ran the largest Black-owned McDonald’s franchise businesses in the nation. Now he's suing the fast food chain for racial discrimination. Washington once owned 27 restaurants in New York, Pennsylvania, and Ohio. He alleges he’s been forced by McDonald’s to sell seven stores to white owners.

“I was not given the consideration and breaks that McDonald’s routinely extends to white owners to ensure they're successful,” he said.

A former collegiate track star and one-time Major League Baseball player for the Oakland Athletics, Washington opened his first McDonald’s in Rochester in 1980. He says that restaurant, at the corner of North Clinton and Clifford avenues, immediately failed to meet sales expectations set by the company. What followed was a pattern of discrimination, he says, of McDonald’s discouraging black owners from opening restaurants in predominantly white neighborhoods.

So Washington focused on the inner city, eventually owning five McDonald’s in the Rochester area.

“The cost of doing business was greater even back then,” he said. “My average customer did not have that kind of the disposable income that customers had in Henrietta, Greece, Pittsfield, Brighton, et cetera."

Washington sold his Rochester restaurants in 1998, buying a slew of locations in Ohio. He sued, he says, after McDonald’s Corporation forced him to sell seven of those stores to white owners. The civil rights suit alleges the chain is squeezing out minority owners, many of whose stores see lower profits because of the poor neighborhoods where they're located.

“The truth is that Herb succeeded against incredible odds,” said attorney Joe Peiffer, managing partner of Peiffer Wolf Carr Kane & Conway, the law firm representing Washington. “Posed in the form of obstacles created by McDonald's to impede and undermine Black store owners. But McDonald’s put a target on Washington's back when he objected to its discriminatory treatment of himself and other Black store owners.”

McDonalds Corporation responded to the suit with a statement:

“This situation is the result of years of mismanagement by Mr. Washington, whose organization has failed to meet many of our standards on people, operations, guest satisfaction and reinvestment. His restaurants have a public record of these issues including past health and sanitation concerns and some of the highest volumes of customer complaints in the country.”

The fast food chain says it will "review the complaint and respond accordingly."

Washington responded to McDonald's claims of mismanagement:

"When confronted with their own racism, McDonald's attacks the Black man for allegedly having 'dirty stores.' How could I be an owner for 40 years if that were true? Rather than addressing my allegations, McDonald's follows its racist playbook of retaliation."

Washington says he wants to put an end to a system that's stacked against people like him.

“I had to fight for everything. I didn’t know it would last a lifetime,” he said. “No matter how good you are, it ain’t good enough if your skin looks like mine."