The government agency charged with protecting equal opportunity in the workplace has filed suit against Lawry’s, reports the Los Angeles Times. The government’s case is that the chain can no longer stick with its 1938 policy of hiring only women servers to work those silver carts.

The chain still lives off its style of service that characterized the original Beverly Hills establishment. The EEOC says, however, that with men relegated to much less prestigious and much less lucrative “helper” positions, the chain is breaking the law.

The agency says that men in those positions earn 40 percent less than the $45,000 earned by the best servers. The EEOC lawyer admits that this wasn’t the original idea of the 1964 Civil Rights Act, which was written to prevent discrimination against women but the agency now files about 20 percent of its cases to boost men’s employment prospects.

The suit was sparked because the Las Vegas restaurant refused to promote a man to server. “He was told … in a smirking way, ‘You’ve got to fit into this dress to be a server,’ ” the EEOC official told the paper. She was referring to Lawry’s signature server costume: a ruffly bibbed apron over an old-fashioned dress and a frilly headpiece.

That’s shades of the Hooter’s lawsuit to compensate men that that chain had refused to hire. Despite the flack the agency took back then, it did win over $3 million for the men.

The original Las Vegas complainant has since been hired as a server but the EEOC is proceeding because few men have been hired and the EEOC is seeking compensation for men who were denied a promotion.