Abercrombie Discriminating Against Muslims

Many people know that Abercrombie workers have a very distinct look to them. Abercrombie requires a very specific look for their employees and one muslim women was denied a job at the clothing store because of her headscarf. The 17 year old females name was Samantha Elauf. Elauf decided to take her issue to the Supreme Court and argued that Abercrombie denying her a job because of her headscarf was a direct violation of the Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission
argued for Elauf saying that Title VII requires that employers offer accommodations to certain policies.

The district court ended up siding with Elauf. Elauf was awarded $20,000 for compensation for being rejected the job at Abercrombie. The decision ended up being overturned on appeal. The reason that this court case ended up being overturned was that Abercrombie said that they would grant religious accommodations when employees requested them. Abercrombie claimed that they had no way of knowing that the scarf was for religious accommodations. This continued to be argued for quite some time because Elauf argued that she did not know that she was required to bring up her religious values during the interview.

The court did end up ruling with Elauf and she was compensated for being denied the job at Abercrombie. This court case appears interesting to me because although Abercrombie argues that they did not know that the headpiece was being worn because of Elauf's religious values would they have still hired her even if they did know. Abercrombie requires a very distinct look for their "models" so it appears to me that they could be using this excuse as a coverup.