Posted on 07/21/2025 8:24:58 AM PDT by DFG
Is it unfair if a company that specializes in picking up and transporting heavy loads emphasizes hiring younger people over employing senior citizens? That's the federal government's position in the case of Meathead Movers, a California business that bills itself as offering "athlete movers" who are "clean-cut, strong, and professionally-trained." The federal Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) has spent years investigating the company for age discrimination and even filed a rare agency-initiated lawsuit against the company with no individual plaintiff claiming harm. Now, Arizona's Goldwater Institute is suing the EEOC to find out what's behind the federal bureaucracy's anti-meathead jihad.
Why Would You Prefer Strong, Young Movers?
"The U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) has filed suit against the San Luis Obispo moving company Meathead Movers, Inc., the largest independent moving company in California, for refusing to hire people based on age," the federal bureaucracy boasted in September of 2023. "The EEOC's lawsuit charges that since at least 2017, Meathead Movers failed to recruit and hire applicants over 40 into moving, packing and customer service positions. Meathead maintains a pattern or practice of recruiting and hiring young college students, intentionally excluding older workers regardless of their individual abilities."
Founded in 1997 by two then-high school athletes, Aaron and Evan Steed, the company has grown into California's largest independent moving company based on the what the company describes as "the brothers' vision of energetic athletes delivering a unique customer service experience."
A 2017 profile in Inc. magazine described the company's evolution into not just a larger and more successful moving company, but a launch pad for young athletes. Meathead Movers "hires student athletes with ambitious career goals and helps them achieve those goals through coaching, training, and confidence building. When employees start their postgraduation job searches, founder Aaron Steed proactively calls hiring managers to sing their praises." To that end, the profile added, "the business recruits its 350-plus movers–mostly wrestlers, as well as football and baseball players–from colleges in southern and central California."
The approach has fans. This year, Pacific Coast Business Times surveyed 1,400 employees at almost 100 companies and named Meathead Movers among the "2025 Central Coast Best Places to Work."
This means the company's founders built a growing moving business that's popular among its employees (and presumably the customers who have driven that growth) by hiring strong young people to pack, lift, and transport heavy objects while they are in the prime of fitness. It trains them for the larger work world after moving and then launches them. Then it hires more.
Pay Us $15 Million and Shut Up About It
That's kind of a cool business model. But the feds don't like it. They began investigating Meathead Movers roughly a decade ago. Then they slapped the company with a demand for $15 million and changes in its internal practices to settle the EEOC's age-discrimination claims.
"We of course said, 'sorry, we can't afford that' and I'm never going to agree to go out of business," Meathead Movers CEO Aaron Steed objects in a video posted to Facebook. "From there, we had three mediations, all of which failed. I agreed to all the non-monetary demands: changing our training, changing the wording in our slogan, all kinds of things. And still, they wanted an eight-figure settlement which would have bankrupted my company."
The EEOC didn't like Steed going public, so it told the company to shut up. Meathead Movers wouldn't be allowed to share its ordeal or its side of the story with the public.
"The EEOC issued a gag order demanding that Aaron and his company cease all public communication—including social media posts—about the case, under threat of additional legal action," according to the Goldwater Institute, which is now involved in the case. "In other words, the government is now trampling on the First Amendment rights of the company's founder, simply because it doesn't like that the company is sharing the truth about the government's actions in this case."
The Only People With a Complaint Are Federal Bureaucrats
Interestingly, the EEOC isn't backing a lawsuit filed by aggrieved current or former employees—it's still trawling for anybody with an axe to grind against Meathead Movers on the agency's website, desperately looking for "individuals aged 40 or older who applied to Meathead and believe they were not hired because of their age." In the absence of somebody with a complaint, the EEOC launched its own lawsuit based on its distaste for the company's philosophy and business practices.
"Within the EEOC, no current or former employee has ever filed an age discrimination claim against Meathead Movers," noted Dylan Foreman of local NBC affiliate KSBY in a March story about the case. "The EEOC has filed only eight lawsuits based on its own initiated investigations within the last 10 years across all statutes and in all federal courts across the entire country."
The EEOC admits that even short of lawsuits, "directed investigations" in the absence of complaints by aggrieved individuals are unusual and constitute "far less than 1%" of its volume.
That makes the ongoing crusade against this moving company highly unusual. Federal bureaucrats are going out of their way to torment a business—CEO Aaron Steed says the company has run up $1.5 million in legal costs so far—in the absence of any aggrieved parties other than themselves.
The Tri-County Chamber Alliance, representing chambers of commerce in San Luis Obispo, Santa Barbara and Ventura counties, calls the case against Meathead Movers "a shocking government shakedown by the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission."
Is the EEOC Waging a Personal Vendetta?
Frankly, it looks like a personal vendetta or a hit job. It's certainly something worth looking into. And that's exactly what the Goldwater Institute is now doing.
Last week, after federal bureaucrats ignored a public records request on behalf of Meathead Movers, Goldwater filed a lawsuit against the EEOC seeking "records pertaining to the total number of complaints against Meathead Movers, publicly-available information about the EEOC's investigation of Meathead Movers, information about other agency-initiated lawsuits, including allegations of age discrimination, and communications about Meathead Movers, including to and from specific EEOC officials."
Maybe with the help of the Goldwater Institute, Meathead Movers will finally discover why federal bureaucrats want to drive the company out of business.
This is a awesome company.
“This is a awesome company”
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Which is apparently why some POS bureaucrats feel it should be destroyed.
The EEOC didn’t like Steed going public, so it told the company to shut up. Meathead Movers wouldn’t be allowed to share its ordeal or its side of the story with the public.
“The EEOC issued a gag order demanding that Aaron and his company cease all public communication—including social media posts—about the case, under threat of additional legal action,” according to the Goldwater Institute, which is now involved in the case. “In other words, the government is now trampling on the First Amendment rights of the company’s founder, simply because it doesn’t like that the company is sharing the truth about the government’s actions in this case.”
The Only People With a Complaint Are Federal Bureaucrats
Interestingly, the EEOC isn’t backing a lawsuit filed by aggrieved current or former employees—it’s still trawling for anybody with an axe to grind against Meathead Movers on the agency’s website,
There must not be enough real eeoc work, that they pursue something that has no victims.
Reduce their budget by a bunch, since they have all this money to burn and nothing legitimate to use it on.
“I’m from the Government and I’m here to help.”....................
https://www.goldwaterinstitute.org/litigation/our-cases/
The Goldwater Institute frequently takes the fight for liberty to court. Through our Scharf-Norton Center for Constitutional Litigation, we litigate cases and file briefs to advance freedom and defend individual rights across the country, on issues ranging from free speech and property rights to school choice and equal protection under the law, and much more.
We opened the Scharf-Norton Center in 2007, making us the first state-based free-market think tank to deploy a team of lawyers to promote our vision in court. In the decade-plus since, the Institute’s litigation team has advocated for freedom before state supreme courts, federal courts of appeal, and even the U.S. Supreme Court. Here are some of the cases we are working on today:
Here’s a dilemma:
“The head of the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) is Andrea R. Lucas, who is the Acting Chair. She was appointed to the position by President Donald J. Trump.”
Not that it’s of any consequence, but she is a black female.
They’ve got to create work for themselves, otherwise they might get DOGE’d,
EEOC is gubermints version of your company’s HR
So why did the federal government target this successful American business. The Institute sent public records requests to find out.
In March 2025, the Goldwater Institute filed a Freedom of Information Act (“FOIA”) request demanding answers: Were any complaints filed against Meathead Movers? Has the EEOC taken similar actions against other companies? The agency refused to hand over that basic information, citing privacy concerns. But privacy is for individuals. Transparency is for the government. Instead of providing the transparency the law demands, federal bureaucrats are keeping the public in the dark.
The Goldwater Institute filed a lawsuit against the EEOC to compel compliance with the FOIA and to require production of the requested information.
A reminder to all of us to shine the light on things. Don’t say “no big deal” and let it pass. I have reported thefts knowing I wouldn’t get justice but I think it stopped a lot of future thefts. Word gets around.
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Andrea Ruth Lucas is an American lawyer, currently serving as a member of the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. She was appointed as the commission's acting chair by Donald Trump in 2025. Lucas is a vocal opponent of diversity, equity, and inclusion initiatives, believing that they motivate reverse discrimination. She has also criticized the application of federal civil rights protections to transgender individuals.
wiki
Understandably, the EEOC has to be low on President Trump's radar given the massive and treacherous nature of his enemies in the Federal bureaucracy, the Deep State, the Democratic Party, and the RINOs in his own party. The EEOC is going to bat against companies that have used DEI as a reason to discriminate against white heterosexual men and for Christians fired or demoted because of their faith. Under the current leadership, the agency is much better than it had been under Biden.
Hire the workers as “Models”.
You can discriminate any way you want.
Anti-Trump people with the governmental apparatus.
Because 70 year old women can move couches and fridges just like the young men can.
This is one where Trump’s DOJ and EEOC should get involved. They should provide all the records and fire the ones guilty to send a message.
“anti-meathead jihad”
Like we have to sue to find out. The federal government is run by homosexual deviants, trannies, queers, and angry fat black women. They HATE all things healthy, male, and strong.
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