Walmart will end its practice of locking up African-American beauty care products in glass cases, the retail giant said on Wednesday after a fresh round of criticism that the policy was a form of racial discrimination.
Hair care and beauty products sold predominantly to black people could be accessed at certain stores only by getting a Walmart employee to unlock the cases, some of which featured additional anti-theft measures.
“We’re sensitive to the issue and understand the concerns raised by our customers and members of the community and have made the decision to discontinue placing multicultural hair care and beauty products — a practice in place in about a dozen of our 4,700 stores nationwide — in locked cases,” Mr. Lopez wrote.
In 2018, a California woman sued Walmart in federal court for discrimination over the policy, saying she felt humiliated having to ask a store employee to unlock the beauty products case on three visits to the store, including to buy a comb that cost $0.48.
The woman, Essie Grundy, said she went to a Walmart in Perris, Calif., in Riverside County to buy body lotion by the beauty brand Cantu when she noticed that all of the products “targeted at African-Americans” were locked in a glass case, “from the middle of the aisle to the end.”
