An employee who asked to be exempted from a retailer’s “Look” policy which required her to wear revealing or close fitting attire sold by the company can proceed on her discrimination claim based on religion, a federal district court in Missouri rules.
The employee was hired with the understanding that employee duties included wearing clothing that demonstrated the “style” of the store, which “consisted of ‘ripped-up jeans, a little revealing, sporty, California beach style, laid back,’ and was sexy, form-fitting, and designed to show off body contours and draw attention to the wearer,” the court observes. However, after the employee converted to the Apostolic religion, she began to adhere to its regulations regarding dress and said she could wear only skirts that fell below the knee, shirts with sleeves that came to the forearm, and could not wear “low-necked shirts, or those that revealed any cleavage.”
The retailer offered accommodations such as allowing her to wear jeans instead of skirts, to wear short skirts with leggings to cover her legs, or to look in other stores for skirts that would both meet her religious requirements and be consistent with their style. She said that none of the options was acceptable, and reiterated her request that she be permitted to wear skirts that fell at or below the knee. The company refused, and she submitted her resignation and filed a religious discrimination complaint with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission.
The court declines to dismiss the complaint, reasoning that although the retailer had engaged in “an interactive process designed to understand and attempt to accommodate [the employee’s] religious beliefs…[the court] finds the question of whether any of Defendants’ three proposed solutions, i.e., permitting [the employee] to wear jeans instead of skirts, to wear short skirts with leggings underneath to cover her legs, or to look in other stores for skirts that would both meet her religious requirements and be consistent with [their style] constituted a reasonable accommodation, remains an issue of fact for the jury.” The court also rules that the retailer failed to meet their burden of demonstrating that “they would have suffered more than a de minimis hardship had they further accommodated [the employee].” EEOC v. Abercrombie & Fitch Stores, Inc.
