A federal judge in New York has thrown out a lawsuit in which a Walmart shopper said she was wrongly accused of coupon fraud and singled out because of her race.
Rachel Hart sued the retailer earlier this year, claiming she was detained, questioned and arrested “because she was an African-American woman with two small children, who paid for her groceries by couponing.”
She said it all took place back in January of 2021, when she and her children were shopping at a Walmart store in East Greenbush, just outside of Albany, New York.
Calling herself a “devout couponer,” Hart said she completed her shopping, headed to the checkout, and “retrieved several manufacturer’s coupons and/or store coupons from her purse” to redeem at the register. It was no different than any other shopping trip, she claimed, as she “routinely used coupons to substantially reduce her total bill.”
When she and her children attempted to leave the store, however, she said a loss prevention officer stopped her to check her receipt and the items she had purchased. That, too, is relatively routine for many Walmart shoppers.
What wasn’t routine, was that Hart was then accused of committing coupon fraud. According to her lawsuit, police were called, she was taken to a security room for questioning, and then put under arrest for petit larceny – even though a store manager “approached and informed the police that Hart had done nothing wrong.” She was given a court date, but the charges were ultimately dismissed.
She and her children were “the only African-Americans” in the store “who had presented coupons for redemption,” her lawsuit alleged. “White people also coupon and have done so without incident at this location.”
Hart sought a total of $45 million from Walmart, the town of East Greenbush, and the officers who questioned and arrested her, saying they had unjustly accused her, unlawfully detained her, discriminated against her, and inflicted emotional distress upon her and her children.
So is Walmart racist? Was Hart a legitimate couponer or a fraudster? In this case, no one’s name will be cleared, because the judge’s decision all came down to a technicality.
The incident in question took place in January 2021. Hart first filed suit in February 2024, more than three years later – well beyond the statute of limitations. So the judge last week dismissed the case outright, without ever considering the merits of each side’s arguments.
This particular case never made headlines, unlike a spate of racially-charged coupon-related confrontations several years ago. Back in 2018, a CVS manager in Chicago was fired after going viral for calling police on a Black woman who said she was wrongly accused of using a fraudulent coupon. Just one week later, a similar situation resulted in the firing of a Dollar General manager in Buffalo, New York, who called police after accusing a Black woman of “trying to play games with the digital coupons.” And a year later, a Black woman in Aurora, Colorado went viral when she was recorded being frisked outside a Target store after an earlier dispute inside over a coupon.
So Hart won’t get the $45 million, or the justice, that she sought. And we may never know what really happened inside that Walmart store in January of 2021. If nothing else, this “devout couponer” has now learned a disappointing lesson – that litigable offenses, like coupons, have an expiration date.
Image source: Walmart
I encountered a similar problem at a Food Lion during Covid. I had legitimately printed coupons and was looked at suspiciously during checkout. Manager came over and said something to the effect of “we’re not even supposed to be handling these because of ‘what’s going around'”, implying that they could get sick from handling the paper. Uhh, do they not handle paper cash ALL THE TIME? I left my items at that location, went to a different Food Lion, and had no problem at all during checkout. Sometimes you just bump into who make up their own rules. I complained to Food Lion corporate and that manager was gone within a few weeks. You reap what you sow.