Host Alan J. Reinach, Esq., discussing the historic Supreme Court case of EEOC v. Abercrombie &amp; Fitch, asking the question: how far do we take conformity? 

<p>Host Alan J. Reinach, Esq., discussing the historic Supreme Court case of EEOC v. Abercrombie &amp; Fitch, asking the question: how far do we take conformity? </p>

<p>Free sharing permitted under the Creative Commons <a rel="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/us/">BY-NC-ND 3.0 (US)</a> license.</p>

Church State Council

Alan Reinach

Conformity in the Workplace?


Ah, sweet land of liberty. Our founding fathers not only pledged, but gave their lives, their fortunes, and their sacred honor to obtain our God-given liberty. Now it's our turn. Liberty can only thrive if it's alive in the hearts of a freedom-loving people. I'm Dan Matthews, and I'm pleased to welcome you to Freedom's Ring.

Here's our host and constitutional lawyer and minister, Alan Reinoch. Well Dan, How far do we have to go to conform in the workplace, to leave our own personalities and identities and appearance at home and look alike and dress alike and talk alike and walk alike and act alike and conform to what the boss tells us to be. That may seem like an overstatement of how to describe a very critical Supreme Court case But I think that is really the issue at heart, conformity in the workplace. Samantha Alof is a 19-year-old American girl who happens to be a Muslim. And she applied to work at Abercrombie & Fitch and on the day of her application she wore a black headscarf.

The manager liked her, apparently she was definitely an A&F quality type person, had a reasonably attractive appearance, which Abercrombie & Fitch does not hire sales people, they hire models. They have very definite standards of what they're looking for. And 1 thing they clearly were not looking for was a black head scarf or a head scarf of any kind. The store manager was happy to hire Miss Eloff, but the district manager said no, she's wearing a black head scarf we can't hire her. Now this case was filed by the EEOC, and they won in the trial court on the issue of religious discrimination.

But on appeal, the 10th Circuit, United States Court of Appeals, said no, it's not religious discrimination because Miss Elof never informed management that she was a Muslim woman. They assumed that she was Muslim, they assumed correctly, and because of that they fired her. But that's not religious discrimination. So for starters, it strikes me that this is like saying that if it looks like a duck, if it waddles like a duck, But if it doesn't open its mouth and quack like a duck then legally you're out of luck duck. You ain't no duck well Because Samantha never had she was never asked What about that headscarf?

Why are you wearing it or? Even a better question. That's not a good question for an employer to ask, are you aware that our company has a policy against wearing head scarves, against wearing anything on your head? Is that a problem for you? Now that's a perfectly good question.

They had no idea whether Miss Eloff was just wearing the headscarf for that 1 day or was she wanting to wear it every day and whether that was something that they would have to consider whether they could accommodate. But they simply excluded her because of her appearance. And this is something that happens every business day in America. People are denied employment because of their appearance. Now 1 aspect of this case, and we're going to come back to it, is the issue of conformity.

Do we have to take off all of the things that express our faith in our appearance when we go to work? So for example, Christians wear crosses, many of them, some do. Jews, Jewish men, many Jewish men will wear a yarmulke. Sikhs wear turbans. Muslim women will wear some kind of head covering.

There's all kinds of different forms of religious expression. Some religions wear beards. So do we have to conform? Do we have to leave our faith, leave our religious identity, leave our religious personality at home when we come to work. But there's another issue at stake in this case, and this has to do with the right of all Americans to attend weekly worship services on a regular basis.

Now for many Americans those services are going to be on Sunday. Some refuse to work on Sundays entirely. There are some, like myself, who worship on Sabbath, sundown Friday to sundown Saturday, and will not work, although as a preacher we preachers work on Sabbath. Of course Muslims have their weekly worship service on Fridays. So what happens when The employment application asks whether you're available for work 7 days a week.

If you're someone who insists on going to church every week on Sunday, you can't answer that question, yes. If you're a Sabbath observer and you observe a day of rest, whether it's on Saturday or Sunday, You can't answer that question. And what happens anymore, these applications are online, if you can't answer the question, you're out of the system. You're bounced out, closed out, and you never have a chance to say, please can you accommodate my religious worship? We saw this back in the post 9-11 era with the Immigration and Naturalization Service as they were transitioning to become ICE, Immigration Customs Enforcement.

And we got them to change their whole hiring system with a case we had way back when. But this case before the court, if it goes the wrong way, would allow employers to insulate themselves from having to hire anybody who had a weekly faith commitment. Maybe it's prayer meeting or choir rehearsal and you need to be there at the same time every week. Maybe it's Tuesday night, maybe it's Wednesday night. And that's just a non-negotiable for you.

You're available the rest of the time except for your worship service and when choir rehearsal is. Do we have to give up choir for work? Does that really make sense? Does the boss really have a claim on our time 24-7? Well, increasingly, this is what the modern workplace is coming to.

And this case before the Supreme Court is really going to make a difference, 1 way or the other, in whether the workplace will be inclusive of people of faith. But I want to step back from the facts of the case for a moment because a colleague of mine published an article about this case in a California newspaper in what you would think of as a fairly liberal type of community in the San Francisco Bay Area. And what she found was a flood of negative comments posted on the newspaper website, hostile to Muslims, hostile to the idea that Americans can bring their religious garb into the workplace. And I mean, I guess there is a sense historically where bigotry and hostility to people who are different is kind of all-American. That's always been part of American life.

It's not something we should be proud of. I certainly hope not. But I'm troubled by it. I'm troubled that we would tell an American-born girl, you have to leave your identity at home if you want to come get a job at the mall. You can't be who you are.

And I'm troubled for her, but I'm troubled for our society where so many people want to say that. Where so many people want to say, freedom is for people who look like us, who dress like us, who behave like us, and if you're different, then you don't belong here. Go back to where you came from." Well, she didn't come from somewhere. She came from here. This is where she was born.

This is her home. So it's not about going back to somewhere. So I'm having this discussion with you, our listening audience today, because I want us all to take a step back and think about what is the meaning of religious freedom here in America? What is it that we value? Do we just value freedom for people who believe like we do, who look like we do, who conform to our notions of what is faith?

Or are we prepared to defend the freedom to differ? See, to me, in an unfree society, you lack the freedom of dissent. The ability to have dissent, to be a dissenter, to me is the measure of our freedom. Can we be different? Can you march to the tune of a different drummer as it was once written?

Henry David Thoreau, that's who it was. It took me a minute. That has always been part of my ethos, an ethos of nonconformity. And certainly as a Jewish kid from New York, giving my heart to Jesus Christ was definitely a nonconformist thing for me to do, even more so than following the culture of the 60s and 70s that I grew up in and thought was a culture of nonconformity. Are we going to insist that our fellow Americans conform to our notions of what somebody should look like.

I'm curious, how many of our listeners wear a white button-down dress shirt to work? We defined professional life by the white collar. Well, my color is blue. I'll wear a white shirt once in a while, but not very often. I prefer other color shirts.

I prefer shirts that express some personality, not just a dull white. White looks nice for elegant times, for dress up, but I'm not about to conform to somebody else's notions of what I should look like in the workplace. What about you? Are you a conformist? Do you want others to conform to your views of what they should look like when they go to work?

Are you prepared to extend freedom? Maybe you're an employee, maybe you're a supervisor, maybe you're a manager, Maybe you have the power over others. Are you willing to let people be who they are, with all of their values, with all of their diversity? To me, that has been what has made America great. We have always welcomed people who would take a risk, who would leave the comfort of their own homes and communities and come for a better life.

They were more aggressive risk-takers, more determined to Get ahead. And that's part of the ethos of America, is incorporating all kinds of people into the fabric of American life. And yes, inevitably, we are all going to be shaped by our interactions with the workplace, with the culture, with the society, and it will change us. But are we going to be required to conform? I gotta admit, folks, I hate that word conformity, and I certainly am hoping and praying that the Supreme Court gets this 1 right.

There were oral arguments recently and it looks like, I'm not a prophet, but from what I'm told it looks like a 7-2 possibly or an 8-1 in favor of religious freedom, in favor of the right to be different. So my prayers go out to Samantha Eloff, and I'm very appreciative of the EEOC taking this case all the way to the Supreme Court. I'm proud of my own church, the Seventh-day Adventist Church, that mobilized the faith community in filing a brief in this case in support of the EEOC. We have long been at the forefront of religious freedom in the United States, going back to the early days of our organized work back in 1889. That's how far back the organized religious liberty work of the Seventh-day Adventist Church goes.

So, to conform or not, what are we going to value in American life? Do we really value freedom enough to extend it to others? Isn't that the bottom line? We value it enough to extend it to others. It's time to close.

We want to remind our listeners here at Freedom's Ring, we don't just talk about religious freedom. For 50 years the Church State Council has been providing legal services to those suffering religious discrimination. Check out the Church State Council Legal Resources page at churchstate.org. And don't forget, Freedom is not free. Be informed.

Get involved. Join the North American Religious Liberty Association today, producer of Freedom's Ring on the web at religiousliberty.info. This has been Freedom's Ring, I'm your host, Alan Reinach. Until next week, Let freedom ring.

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Conformity in the Workplace?

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