UMKC professor sues, claiming discrimination at South Plaza restaurant | Opinion
Randall Johnson is a law professor at the University of Missouri-Kansas City. Earlier this month, Johnson, a Black man, filed a public accommodation lawsuit in Jackson County Circuit Court alleging that because of his race he was denied service at Osteria Il Centro, a restaurant near UMKC and the Country Club Plaza. Because of the way Johnson alleges he was treated during the grievance process that followed, Kansas City is also named in the lawsuit as is Daniel O’Connor, a senior investigator with Kansas City’s Civil Rights and Equal Opportunity department. Osteria Il Centro is owned by the same people who operate Minsky’s Pizza. Because of this connection, Minsky’s is also a defendant in the lawsuit. As with any lawsuit, Randall Johnson’s claims of discrimination and retaliation against the restaurant and Kansas City are merely allegations at this point. But in January, Johnson received a notice of right to sue from the Missouri Commission on Human Rights, according to legal documents. Repeated attempts to reach Minsky’s and Osteria founder Gregg Johnson for comment were unsuccessful. When I called the corporate number listed for Minsky’s parent company, Barry Road Associates, I was told by an employee of the pizzeria’s location near Zona Rosa that workers weren’t allowed to give out Johnson’s contact info. Efforts this week to reach Gregg Johnson at the Main Street location were unsuccessful as well. I also sent a message through Minsky’s website seeking comment. As of Wednesday, I hadn’t heard back. There are other complaints of discrimination made against Osteria Il Centro employees on file with the Missouri Commission on Human Rights. I will expound more on those later. In Johnson’s lawsuit, he claims a manager at Osteria Il Centro discriminated against him by treating him differently from four other white law professors Johnson dined with the night of Feb. 3, 2023. The lawsuit contends Johnson was the only nonwhite patron at Osteria during the visit. Attempts to reach the manager named in the lawsuit for comment were unsuccessful. A voicemail message I left for him at Osteria was not returned. As of this week, no answer to Johnson’s lawsuit was on file, according to online court records. Because the manager wasn’t charged with a crime or found to have violated city policy on equal rights, I won’t name him in this column. Had to wait for Uber in colleague’s car “There were no issues until (Johnson) went to the restroom, handed the server his card, and told the server he would like to purchase a bottle of wine for his colleagues at the table,” the lawsuit states. “The server informed the manager of (Johnson’s) request to purchase a bottle of wine. The manager took (Johnson’s) card from the server and waited outside the restroom for (Johnson) to come out.” When Johnson emerged from the restroom, the manager allegedly told him to leave the restaurant, according to legal documents. No reason was given as to why the manager wanted Johnson to leave, according to the lawsuit. In legal filings, Johnson contends the manager told him he could ask diners to leave for any reason. Johnson took the card from the manager and returned to his seat, according to the lawsuit. Twenty minutes later, the manager came to Johnson’s table and stated, “I hate to be the bearer of bad tidings, but we need this table for the incoming reservations,” according to court documents. Johnson asked about other open tables inside the restaurant, but was told that he could not sit at any of them, according to the lawsuit. Johnson then pointed to unoccupied bar seating and asked why he could not be seated. The manager claimed that only three seats were available at the bar even though the bar was empty, the suit states. The manager informed Johnson that none of the bar seats was available to him, he alleges in the lawsuit. Johnson’s colleagues then asked for the manager’s name because of the way Johnson was being treated but he would only provide his first name, according to the lawsuit. Johnson “was then forced to wait for an Uber in his colleague’s car, with two of his colleagues, instead of being able to eat at the bar, as he was taking a flight out of Kansas City that night,” the lawsuit reads. Civil rights division denies claim Two days after Johnson’s encounter at Osteria, he filed an online discrimination complaint with Kansas City’s Civil Rights and Equal Opportunity division, according to legal documents. In the lawsuit, Johnson contends he only wanted the management to acknowledge he was mistreated and to retrain its employees — mainly the manager who talked to Johnson. When management failed to do so, he moved forward with the formal complaint. At some point in this matter, O’Connor took over as lead investigator, according to the lawsuit. According to O’Connor’s Linkedin profile, he worked at the Missouri Commission on Human Rights before coming to Kansas City in July 2023. Johnson claims O’Connor worked hand in hand with legal reps for Osteria to undermine his complaint, the lawsuit states. The city’s Civil Rights and Equal Opportunity division unjustly denied Johnson’s claims against the restaurant, according to the lawsuit. “Mr. O’Connor engaged in a discriminatory and/or biased investigation into (Johnson’s) case as he threw out the previous investigator’s findings based on defendant Minsky’s admissions and omissions,” the lawsuit reads. The lawsuit claims O’Connor reinterviewed Minsky’s witnesses but did not afford the same courtesy to Johnson’s UMKC colleagues. The lawsuit reads: “O’Connor did not contact or interview any of (Johnson’s) witnesses, omitted (Johnson’s) responses to his questions, deleted all (Johnson’s) documentation and evidence.” Johnson later requested a hearing with embattled Kansas City Manager Brian Platt’s office to appeal the City’s Civil Rights and Equal Opportunity denial but that request was turned down, according to court records. Last August, Platt’s office notified Johnson that the city’s law department completed the review of Johnson’s complaint and informed Johnson that “the City did not have a formal process for appealing CREO determinations, but that he could request a review of CREO’s determinations through the MCHR,” the lawsuit reads, referring to the Civil Rights and Equal Opportunity division and Missouri Commission on Human Rights. First order of business for the Kansas City Council: Establish a process to appeal decisions made by the city’s equal rights division. Second, the Council must take a serious look at claims made against city officials — Platt included — in Johnson’s lawsuit alleging due process and open records violations. According to Johnson’s lawsuit, he filed a Sunshine Law request for all records related to his case but was denied due to what Platt’s office described as attorney-client privilege, court records show. Again these are serious allegations made by Johnson that must be proven in the court of law. But if true, the owners of Osteria Il Centro as well as city officials have got some explaining to do. KC silent on lawsuit Voicemail and email messages sent to Casey Housley, the attorney who represented Osteria in Johnson’s complaint, were not returned. A message sent to O’Connor seeking comment was forwarded to Kansas City spokesperson Sherae Honeycutt. “The city is unable to comment on pending litigation,” Honeycutt wrote in an email. When reached via email, Randall Johnson declined to comment and referred me to his attorney Madison McBratney. In an email, McBratney also declined to speak on the specifics of the case but did provide a written statement. In the correspondence, McBratney said Johnson seeks to ensure equal, fair and nondiscriminatory treatment for all Kansas Citians. “Mr. Johnson’s case is unique in that at every corner he turned for redress, there was more discriminatory treatment waiting for him,” she wrote. “It was not enough that he was discriminated against and humiliated in front of his colleagues, the City of Kansas City then had to make the situation worse by applying an unfair, biased, and improper investigative process.” Interracial couple allegedly singled out Johnson is not the only Osteria diner to file complaints against the restaurant. Two other families claimed they were only given 45 minutes to eat and were treated poorly. On Sept. 25, 2024, Monica Moore and husband Cory Moore traveled from Knob Noster to celebrate their wedding anniversary at Osteria. That night, Monica was the only Black person in the restaurant, according to a complaint she filed with the Missouri Commission on Human Rights. Cory, who is white, also filed a complaint with the state agency. The inquiries are still ongoing, Monica told me this week. Before they were seated, the couple was informed they only had 45 minutes to consume their meal, according to the complaint. It names the aforementioned unidentified floor manager as the responsible party. Feeling slighted and rushed, the couple decided to look for accommodations elsewhere, Monica said during a recent phone interview. “Who wants to be rushed on their wedding anniversary?” she said. “Forty-five minutes is not enough time to really celebrate.” In a review posted to Yelp, Monica described the experience as unacceptable. “After this encounter something needs to be done to address the floor manager’s unacceptable customer service,” she wrote. “No one should be treated in the manner that we were today.” At the time of the couple’s visit, Osteria had no written policy about limited eating time for reservations, nor was there an online option to claim a table, according to Monica’s complaint and Johnson’s lawsuit. Thankfully, Osteria now offers online reservations. Now when customers reserve a table, they are given an hour and a half to dine, which I think is a decent allotment of time. Nowhere on the website did I see a customer could be ushered out if they overstayed their reservation. Was 45-minute time limit applied fairly? Last April, Gabriel Lona and his wife, Jillian Allen, both of Kansas City, dined at Osteria with other family members to celebrate the 84th birthday of Lona’s aunt. Lona told me he is Hispanic and Allen is Black. As their party of eight people finished dinner and dessert, they were approached by someone who wasn’t their waiter, according to Allen’s complaint on file with the state’s human rights commission. Forty-five minutes into their visit, the family was told by a male employee that their time was up and they had to make way for another group, according to the complaint. In the complaint, Allen identified the male employee, who is the same person named in Johnson’s lawsuit, “Looking around us, we were the only brown family in the restaurant,” Allen wrote in the complaint. When I spoke with Lona recently, he told me that the only people he saw waiting were white. Lona and Allen filed separate complaints, both of which were still pending this week. “There is no other explanation,” Lona said. “This was discrimination.” I’ve never eaten at Osteria Il Centro — I heard the Italian fare there is fabulous. But was the 45-minute dining time allotment equally applied to these two families? Until these legal matters are resolved or the allegations proven false, I’m hesitant to support any business that would allegedly treat patrons this way. All Kansas Citians deserve to be treated with dignity and respect — especially when they are spending money at a local establishment.