Progressive insurance, famed for its quirky commercials starring fictional saleswoman Flo, is being sued for “patently unlawful” racism for awarding exclusively black-owned businesses $25,000 — while allegedly banning white, Asian, Hispanic and owners of other backgrounds from applying.
The lawsuit — filed on behalf of Freedom Truck Dispatch owner Nathan Roberts in Ohio federal court on Wednesday — claims that Progressive racially discriminated against non-black small-business owners like Roberts for offering a five-figure award to 10 “black-owned small businesses to use toward the purchase of a commercial vehicle.”
The class-action suit, which was filed by anti-radical left group American First Legal, claimed that on May 24, Roberts, a Progressive customer, received an email “about a grant opportunity for their [Progressive’s] commercial-trucking small-business owners.”