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Seneca Foods is headquartered in Janesville and operates a facility on Janesville’s southside. That Janesville facility is not named and is in no way associated with the actions Rosales alleges happened in Cambria.

Rosales’ suit alleges that between 2021 and 2023, she faced repeated harassment at work over her race, with a former supervisor telling her: “’That’s toxic; you get that because you’re Mexican’: ‘I don’t get Mexicans’; ‘You talk to him because he’s Mexican’; ‘They would understand you better because you speak Mexican, you speak taco’; and ‘It’s because you’re brown.’

The suit says a caucasian plant manager often walked across the plant floor mimicking people who have Spanish-English accents, and calling Rosales and other Hispanic workers at the plant “cholo” — a Spanish-language slang term often used to describe street criminals.

Rosales said she and others repeatedly asked the plant manager not to use the term, because they consider it derogatory.

According to the suit, on other occasions Rosales was assigned to work with a male who over the course of two years in 2021 to 2023 who repeatedly made references to her anatomy, and invited her to his hot tub at home to have sex.

The suit alleges Rosales complained about the treatment, which she told Seneca Foods managers she considered sexual and racial discrimination. Her direct supervisor told her she should leave Seneca Foods if she didn’t like the treatment.

According to court filings, Rosales then got reassigned to work in a warehouse, and was not asked to attend management meetings that others in her position were normally invited to.

Rosales said later, she took family medical leave because she was under duress over how she’d been treated at the plant. She says she was “constructively discharged,” or forced to quit in late 2023.

She is seeking back pay and is suing for emotional pain and suffering. The suit also asks for reparations based on Rosales’ claims that Seneca did not have measures in place to stop the harassment she claims, nor did Seneca take measures to halt the harassment once she reported it.