Lawsuit: Dillard's workers search Black makeup artist's baby stroller for blue dress she didn't take
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A Florida makeup artist is suing Dillard’s department store after she was falsely accused of stealing a dress from a Jacksonville store while with her then 2-month-old baby. Destiny Aeinpour retained civil rights attorneys Ben Crump and Jasmine Rand in the suit against the department store, which the noted attorneys announced at a news conference on Wednesday.
“It was definitely one of the most devastating and emotional times of my life,” Aeinpour said during the news conference.
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Aeinpour told First Coast News shortly after the encounter on Oct. 1, 2018 in Jacksonville’s Town Center that she frequently purchased makeup from the store but didn’t usually shop in the women’s department. She only visited the department on the day in question to compare a maroon dress she purchased at a boutique to Dillard’s offerings. She was looking for something to wear to her brother’s wedding.
She said as she was leaving the store a security guard ran in front of her and told her to stop. Her baby was in a stroller. “My heart completely dropped,” she told the ABC-affiliated news station. “I knew in my mind and heart that I did not do anything.”
Aeinpour said she was targeted because of the color of her skin and taken to a backroom of the store to be questioned and have her bags searched. “They began to search my stroller and my diaper bag and I told them this is not their merchandise,” she said.”I began crying because I was so overwhelmed.”
Aeinpour said employees were searching for a blue dress but they didn’t find it on her. The store’s management later apologized and let her go, First Coast News reported.
“We are looking into the matter and will respond as appropriate directly to Mrs. Aeinpour,” Dillard’s spokesperson Julie Johnson Guymon told the news station at the time.
Guymon declined comment to Daily Kos on Wednesday. “We are respectfully declining comment as a matter of policy,” she said in an emailed statement. “We do not comment on pending legal matters.“
Attorneys Rand and Crump wrote in the complaint:
DILLARD’S store employees targeted Mrs. Aeinpour based on her race, accused her of shoplifting, falsely imprisoned her and her two month old son N.A. for more than a half an hour, searched her person and possessions against her will including her stroller and diaper bag, accused her of stealing a dress, and otherwise subjected Mrs. Aeinpour and her two-month-old son to degrading and humiliating conduct with no reasonable or probable cause to suspect that she had or was in the process of committing a crime.
The attorneys also alleged a history of discrimination accusations against Dillard’s, including an incident involving Artelia Phelps, the plaintiff in another complaint filed against the department store chain last November. Phelps was accused of wearing stolen clothes at a Dillard’s store in Chattanooga, Tennessee, on Nov. 3, 2020. She was handcuffed in the store, “held and publicly searched,” according to the lawsuit.
The incident began when Phelps and her sister took two evening gowns to the store’s dressing room to try on. Phelps left to go to the restroom and reportedly returned to a police officer asking a loss prevention employee: “Is this them?”
The cop demanded bags from the women withPhelps having taken her sister’s purse with her to the restroom, according to the lawsuit. And even though no stolen merchandise was discovered, the loss prevention employee allegedly suggested that the very jeans Phelps wore into the store were stolen. The officer then “reached inside” Phelps’ pants to see if the label matched that of the clothes in the store, attorneys reported in the suit. When it did not, the Dillard’s employee reportedly said: “Those look like our sneakers, too!” After checking the label of her shoes as well, the officer freed Phelps from the handcuffs placed on her previously.
Attorneys mentioned the Phelps complaint in the suit involving Aeinpour as evidence of repeated incidents of discrimination that Dillard’s is accused in. “NAACP officials have referred to DILLARDS as one of the most racist companies in America,” attorneys wrote in the Aeinpour suit, “and the NAACP has filed several lawsuits against DILLARDS alleging racial discrimination.”
Aeinpour is seeking damages in excess of $75,000, and Phelps is seeking damages of $500,000 or more.