Few places like Aurora can appreciate the importance of what the U.S. Supreme Court this week said must be standard practice when it comes to employers dictating the rules for religion and work attire: Don’t go there.
The high court this week handed down a whopping 8-1 ruling for Samantha Elauf, who was fired from her job at Abercrombie & Fitch because she wore a hijab. She’s Muslim. The trendy clothier said head scarves didn’t fit their clothes-with-cache image. Elauf was hired before supervisors saw her in her traditional Muslin garb.
There were some complex and important distinctions to how the case was argued, but the bottom line is simple: Employers must allow workers a great deal of flexibility in what they wear and how they behave if it’s dictated by their religious beliefs. Just as important, employers cannot expect prospective employees to volunteer information about head scarves or anything like it. Why? Because under the law, it shouldn’t matter.
Here in Aurora, a veritable United Nations of diversity across the entire city, the ruling affects just about every business and public institution. Aurora is home to not just a few, but many Africans, Mexicans, Indians, Central Americans, Asians and Eastern Europeans, just to name a few. Religions run a complicated and often conflicting gamut.
There are lots of Americans who question why businesses depending on employee appearance shouldn’t be allowed to discriminate based on anything that affects how workers look when they start their shift. There are plenty of businesses that openly and legally discriminate when hiring against potential employees with piercings, tattoos, provocative hair styles and more.
There were some complex and important distinctions to how the case was argued, but the bottom line is simple: Employers must allow workers a great deal of flexibility in what they wear and how they behave if it’s dictated by their religious beliefs. Just as important, employers cannot expect prospective employees to volunteer information about head scarves or anything like it. Why? Because under the law, it shouldn’t matter.
For many Americans, it’s hard to see the distinctions, often because so many haven’t grown up with Muslim Americans who wear hijabs. It’s easier, though, for some to see how odd it would seem for an employer, even a retail clothier, to tell a Jewish man he couldn’t wear a yarmulke.
What the controversy over the ruling points out is how hijabs and Muslims are still so closely associated with past episodes of American terrorism, and how intolerant we are of immigrants who practice their religion and behave in ways that are the norm for hundreds and hundreds of million of people, just not for most of us.
With so much diversity in Aurora, it’s important for local businesses to know clearly that while they can certainly ask if a prospective employee wears something for religious reasons, it would be illegal to reject them solely for that reason. Likewise, what an employee wears or does that causes safety issues isn’t addressed directly by the ruling. And the ruling made clear that employees aren’t compelled to tell prospective employers any of this when applying for a job.
The bigger picture is that under the law, we must be tolerant and accepting of people who look or act differently than ourselves.
The most egregious thing Abercrombie & Fitch did in this episode was make the determination that a young girl’s hijab would be incompatible with the store’s image, other employees and customer expectations. It’s a hijab. That’s all. Almost anyone in Aurora with kids in public school, at the Community College of Aurora or any of the downtown Denver colleges and universities, can attest to how diverse student bodies and faculty are. There, students and teachers know how common it is to see people wearing clothes or behaving in ways that accommodate their beliefs.
In Aurora it’s easy to see how this ruling was anything but controversial. In Aurora, it’s just business as usual.
Abercrombie and Fitch, like most other bricks and mortar retailers, are doing their best not to offend, or make uneasy, what they consider their core demographic customers. However, traditional bricks and mortar stores will become increasingly irrelevant as folks gradually become more accustom to shopping online … not only to save on sales taxes and gasoline but also for convenience and a greater selection. Online retailers do not have to put up with inventory shrinkage (shoplifting), so they can offer better prices.
Might I add … one core A&F customer demographic are uninhibited, hedonistic and showy young woman … the opposite of the modest, religious young woman wearing a hijab.
I will not be served by a woman wearing this garb, ever. If they cannot do without that form of religious clothing for any part of a day, say at a job, I can do without their service, wouldn’t want to embarrass her with my crude speech, geez, I may get sued over it. For me, it’s thanks, but no thanks. Wear that garb in the desert. What if a ‘new’ religion sprung up that forbade clothing, save a covering over certain parts of your body, wouldn’t that be just as ridiculous?
‘The bigger picture is that under the law,
we must be tolerant and accepting of people who look or act differently
than ourselves’. ‘we’ does not include me, I will not buckle under to muslims and their religious fanaticism.
It’s not just a religion like most religions. It’s a form of government that wants to overthrow our form of government. It probably will eventually because of all the people who put PC above our country.
I know my thinking on this is correct, because Perry thinks it’s not, whew.
He would also agree that if a job applicant comes in with piercings throughout his or her face, tattoo’s across their foreheads and up and down their arms and necks, they would be okay, none of the employers business….right.