Appeals Court: Employees Don’t Have a Right to Wear Dreadlocks

Discussion in 'Race, Religion, Science and Politics' started by cuspofbeauty, Sep 19, 2016.

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  1. cuspofbeauty

    cuspofbeauty
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    Banning employees from wearing their hair in dreadlocks isn’t racial discrimination, a federal appeals court ruled.

    The 3-0 decision Thursday by the 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals dismissed a lawsuit brought by the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission against a company that refused to hire a black woman because she wouldn’t cut her dreadlocks.

    Delving into weighty questions about the concept of race, the case began in 2013 when the EEOC accused an insurance claims processing company in Mobile, Ala., of discriminating against an applicant named Chastity Jones.

    Ms. Jones applied to work for Catastrophe Management Solutions as a customer service representative in 2010. Initially, she was hired. But the job came with a request: The company’s human resources manager told her she needed to cut her dreadlocks to comply with its grooming policy.

    The company requires employees to be dressed and groomed “in a manner that projects a professional and businesslike image.” And dreadlocks, the HR manager told Ms. Jones, “tend to get messy.” When Ms. Jones refused to change her hair, the company withdrew the offer.

    The EEOC alleged that the “prohibition of dreadlocks in the workplace constitutes race discrimination because dreadlocks are a manner of wearing the hair that is physiologically and culturally associated with people of African descent.” The argument, the EEOC said, is based on an understanding of race as “a social construct” that “has no biological definition.”

    At oral arguments, according to the 11th Circuit opinion, the EEOC “asserted that if a white person chose to wear dreadlocks as a sign of racial support for her black colleagues, and the employer applied its dreadlocks ban to that person, she too could assert a race-based disparate treatment claim.”

    Gibson Dunn & Crutcher litigators representing the company said its grooming policy was race-neutral. And they accused the EEOC of indulging in “novel theories” about race and culture that sounded like a sociological thesis on critical theory, not a valid legal argument.

    Federal law bans employment discrimination on the basis of race. And courts have interpreted that to mean discrimination based on skin color and other “immutable traits.”

    The concept of immutability proved decisive. Atlanta-based 11th Circuit Judge Adalberto Jordan, a President Obama appointee who wrote the appellate opinion, said he recognized that definitions and understandings of race can change over time.

    “We would be remiss,” he wrote, “if we did not acknowledge that, in the last several decades, there have been some calls for courts to interpret Title VII more expansively by eliminating the biological conception of ‘race’ and encompassing cultural characteristics associated with race.”

    But Judge Jordan was reluctant for the court to lead such an inquiry. Legally, he said the court wasn’t prepared to go down a path that no court had ever taken.

    “As far as we can tell, every court to have considered the issue has rejected the argument that Title VII protects hairstyles culturally associated with race,” he stated.

    While the definition of discrimination isn’t fixed, it’s a debate to be conducted “through the democratic process,” not by courts, he wrote, affirming a lower-court ruling.

    An EEOC spokeswoman told Law Blog on Friday: “We believe the court was incorrect when it held that the employer’s actions could not be proven to be race discrimination. We are reviewing our options.”

    Gibson Dunn attorney Helgi Walker, who argued the case, said the ruling “reaffirms” that employers “may establish and enforce race-neutral grooming policies for their workplace without running afoul of Title VII.”
     
    #1 cuspofbeauty, Sep 19, 2016
  2. Jdudre

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    #2 Jdudre, Sep 19, 2016
  3. Dreamwalker

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    Cop with cornrows pulled from street duty
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    By DANA DiFILIPPO, difilid@phillynews.com
    POSTED: September 21, 2009
    PHILADELPHIA - To get booted off the street, a police officer has to do something pretty serious - like shoot a suspect or be accused of brutality.

    But in the 35th District, which covers Logan, Olney and adjacent neighborhoods, apparently a hairdo will do it.

    A cop who got cornrows was ordered off the street and kept on desk duty for two days until he cut his braids off, sources said.

    While dozens of black officers across the city wear cornrows, Officer Thomas Strain is white. So when the five-year veteran showed up for work Sept. 3 with the traditionally black hairstyle, it didn't take long for his colleagues - or his bosses - to notice.

    "They pulled him out of roll call and took him right up to the inspector's office," said an officer who asked to remain anonymous.

    Reached last week, Strain declined to comment about the hair hubbub.

    But multiple officers in the 35th say it's been hot gossip, overshadowed only by worries of potential police layoffs, which were averted Thursday when the state agreed to help alleviate the city's budget woes.

    "It's absolutely discriminatory," said one officer. Strain's cornrows 'do "was neat. It was above his collar. It's not like he shaved a Nazi sign or something anti-black or anti-Hispanic on his head. It's just cornrows. I don't know what the problem is."

    The problem, police spokesman Lt. Frank Vanore said, is that Strain's superior didn't feel his cornrows were "professional."

    Ordering Strain to chop them off had nothing to do with discrimination, added Vanore, who spoke with Inspector Aaron Horne about the incident.

    Horne, who oversees the Northwest Police Division, which includes the 35th District, is the supervisor who directed Strain to banish the braids.

    "The policy's the policy, it doesn't matter what race you are," Vanore said.

    Police policy requires officers to have "clean, properly trimmed and combed hair" that doesn't prevent them from wearing their uniform hat "in a military-manner," Vanore said.

    The policy prohibits "unnatural" hair colors such as blue, purple or green but doesn't ban specific styles, such as cornrows, mohawks, dreadlocks or bouffants.

    Vanore didn't see Strain's cornrows, but speculated that they may have kept his hat from fitting his head in the required military manner. He couldn't explain why black officers with cornrows weren't ordered to get haircuts - unless they're women, because the hair policy for female officers is slightly more permissive.

    Still, while the division inspector did instruct Strain to get a haircut, Vanore emphasized, the officer wasn't formally disciplined.

    This isn't the first time an officer's appearance has caused commotion in the 35th District.

    Officer Kimberlie Webb in 2005 sued the city and the police department after she was barred from wearing a hijab, or Muslim head scarf, on the job. A federal appeals court last April upheld the department's policy, saying religious garb imperils the department's appearance of "religious neutrality."

    Other police departments have endured hair hullabaloos too.

    Baltimore in 2007 tried to ban its officers from wearing cornrows, mohawks and dreadlocks, shaving designs into the hair or fashioning hair into "sculpture."

    But officers and others objected on civil-rights grounds, and the ban was never implemented.

    Two officers in Dallas in 2001 claimed they lost their jobs because they refused to cut off their dreadlocks. A Dallas police spokesman said those officers were fired for other disciplinary reasons unrelated to hairstyle.

    As for Strain, friends describe him as a hardworking cop who hails from a family of police officers and who adores police work.

    The former Marine served in Iraq, where he twice survived explosions when his Hummer hit roadside bombs in 2006, co-workers said.

    "He's a guy that, when things go bad, you want him there," one officer said.

    John McGrody, vice president of the Philadelphia Fraternal Order of Police, said the union has "no position" on the discrimination claim.

    "If the officer's hairstyle is consistent with the policy, it shouldn't affect him," he said.
     
    #3 Dreamwalker, Sep 19, 2016
  4. Dante

    Dante https://www.gofundme.com/qv7v5dw
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    #4 Dante, Sep 20, 2016
  5. ColumbusGuy

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    This is ridiculous. It is fucking hair. And to say that dreadlocks are automatically unprofessional and unbusinesslike is ludicrous. That is just absolutely nuts. 'Dreadlocks tend to get messy'??? Any hairstyle can 'get messy'-it depends on the individual and how they take care of their hair. To make that blanket statement is just downright stupid.

    And how can a hairstyle not be professional for someone white, but is ok for someone black? Nobody owns a hairstyle anymore-we are too diverse now for that and there has been too much cultural cross-pollination(as opposed to appropriation imo). Both instances sound like racially prejudiced bullshit.

    Well if dozens of black officers have the hairstyle and it is ok, then it is obviously NOT 'policy is policy'.
     
    #5 ColumbusGuy, Sep 20, 2016
    Last edited: Sep 20, 2016
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