Dubroff: Meathead Movers won’t let the EEOC push it around
For the past eight years, Meathead Movers CEO Aaron Steed has battled the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission over allegations of age discrimination. Now he’s battling to save his company.
The case began as an EEOC-initiated investigation, even though no age discrimination complaint was ever filed against Meathead. The case morphed into a lawsuit in 2023 when the EEOC filed a civil case in federal Court in Los Angeles.
The suit was filed after several failed efforts at mediation, according to both parties. Steed told me he would not pay the sizeable settlement the agency demanded, and a trial has been set for the summer of 2026.
Lately, Steed has gone public, hoping that a combination of the Trump Administration’s pushback against regulatory overreach, and common sense, will persuade the EEOC lawyers to back off.
When I talked with him on the phone on April 15, he said he “continues to feel more confident” of winning. He described this as “a unicorn of a case” that was initiated by the agency for reasons he can’t explain because the company simply does not discriminate against anyone in its hiring practices.
“Excluding older workers based on their age for marketing purposes is unlawful,” said EEOC attorney Anna Park in a release announcing the lawsuit. “Employers should remember that setting criteria and recruiting based on a person’s age violates federal law.”
Steed said his company has employees who are over 40, the basis for the claim, and that he’s made an effort to include older workers in staff competitions and company-wide events that are part of Meathead’s corporate culture. He said he even changed the company’s materials from “student-athlete” movers to “athlete movers” to remove any hint of ageism, even though students can be of any age.
For Steed, a point of pride is Meathead Movers’ involvement in community service, notably offering free moves to any woman in Southern California who experiencing sexual violence at home. Meathead filled nine trucks with donated furniture and delivered them to fire victims in Los Angeles, Steed said.
Steed has been outspoken on social media about the case, trying to get the attention of the White House. He’s been so vocal that he said the EEOC recently sent him a cease-and-desist letter and it’s possible that the agency wants to get a big settlement to justify its existence.
Charles Plumb, an attorney at McAfee & Tate, an Oklahoma law firm that’s not involved in the case, said the aggressive legal attack on Meathead’s corporate culture could be a harbinger of things to come.
“Its self-initiated investigation and this lawsuit reflect the EEOC’s more aggressive approach to enforcing employment discrimination laws that we should expect in the future,” he wrote shortly after the case was filed in 2023.
Meathead’s most innovative efforts to promote employee well-being and morale apparently are part of what got the EEOC’s attention. The company has Olympic-inspired competitions among employees, and it promotes a Meathead Invitational wrestling tournament.
Steed says the innovations are part of what has made Meathead successful. The company was founded in 1997 when Steed was in high school as a way to make money to go to college. He left Cal Poly before graduation and joined a group of young entrepreneurs who helped transform the business culture of San Luis Obispo with new fitness centers, dining options and tech startups.
Meathead is now one of the largest moving companies in Southern California, with six offices and, contrary to the lawsuit’s allegations, he said the company “improves the lives of our employees. Our concept is to do good and drive value,” he said. “It’s been my life’s work.”
Steed said other firms use terms like “college hunks” to recruit employees and that Meathead has made good-faith efforts to modify its messaging. He’s still puzzled and angry about being singled out.
“It’s a mystery as to why and what’s behind it,” he said. By pursuing the case so aggressively, the EEOC has curbed his ability to grow the company and hurt the communities it serves.
With legal bills mounting, he said he’s found some help from the Barry Goldwater Institute, an Arizona-based policy center that’s been working on his case pro bono, alongside his litigation defense team.
“The government is using our tax dollars to fight us,” he said. “It’s absolutely maddening.”
Henry Dubroff is the founder, owner and editor of the Pacific Coast Business Times. He can be reached at [email protected].
