The owners of Reserve Casino Hotel in Central City will pay $250,000 to four women after its management refused to employ them because of their age and their looks.

The penalty was levied Tuesday by a federal judge after the casino’s parent company, RCH Colorado, was sued by the U.S. Equal Opportunity Employment Commission. The casino also will operate under a 3½-year consent decree that requires discrimination training for employees and regular reporting to the EEOC, according to a settlement document filed in U.S. District Court in Denver.

The four women who filed complaints against Reserve Casino said they were let go in January 2011 after the company bought the property in a bankruptcy sale. At the time, the new owners made comments that there were “too many old, fat, ugly and gray-haired employees,” according to the lawsuit.

The new owners also used pictures of employees “to screen out older, less-attractive employees,” the lawsuit said.

At the time, the Reserve Hotel Casino was known as Fortune Valley Hotel and Casino, which had 300 employees before it went bankrupt.

Fortune Valley’s owners fired all of its employees as part of the bankruptcy sale, and they were invited to reapply for their jobs with the casino’s new owners, the lawsuit said.

The four women — Diane Knox, Natalie Gilbert, Eva Pridmore and Constance Hediger — had worked at the casino for several years.

Knox, then 62, Gilbert, then 60, and Pridmore, then 58, were the oldest slot attendants. When they were fired, a 40-year-old man with less experience got a job as a slot attendant, the lawsuit said.

At 63, Hediger was the oldest cocktail server.

The lawsuit cited other examples of the casino’s new owners hiring younger people to work as valets, wait staff and security.

However, the EEOC did not seek a class-action judgment against the casino because the parent company, RCH Colorado, is in receivership, an indication of poor financial health, said Laurie Jaeckel, a EEOC trial attorney in Denver.

Earlier this year, the EEOC settled a $1 million agreement with a Vail condo association over abuse of Mexican workers.

Discrimination against older, female workers is an ongoing problem, Jaeckel said.

In a pleading filed in federal court, the EEOC cited multiple studies that show older women suffer continued discrimination because of their age and gender. The EEOC’s argument included findings that women receive fewer call backs on their resumes and endure myths about being “frumpy, ditzy and meddlesome” and “technically incompetent.”

“This is just a reiteration of what is a wide spread problem for older women,” Jaeckel said. “They experience discrimination in unique ways.”