Posted on 09/28/2016 10:50:34 AM PDT by jazusamo
Full title: Dreadlock Ban Isn’t Discrimination; Court Rejects Govt. Claim of “Racial Distinctions in the Natural Texture of Black and Non-Black Hair”
A federal appellate court has ruled against the Obama administration’s claims that firing a black woman for wearing dreadlocks constitutes racial discrimination and the government agency representing the employee poses an interesting question: Would a woman wearing a hijab face the same fate? The answer is no. Muslims have more rights in the U.S. workplace than African Americans, it seems.
In the aftermath of several rulings protecting Muslim rights to wear religious head covers on the job, a black woman is being prohibited from sporting a hairstyle that is physiologically and culturally associated with people of African descent. That constitutes racial discrimination, according to the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC), the federal agency that enforces the nation’s workplace discrimination laws. The agency filed the case in 2013 on behalf of an Alabama woman, Chastity Jones, who was told by an insurance claims processing company to cut her dreadlocks—long clumps of ungroomed hair, symbolizing the mane of the Lion of Judah—as part of its grooming policy. The EEOC argued that the company, Catastrophe Management Solutions, committed racial discrimination in violation of Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964.
In announcing the lawsuit, the agency’s regional attorney in Birmingham said the litigation didn’t seek to attack policies requiring employees to maintain hair in a professional, neat or conservative manner but rather focus “on the racial bias that may occur when specific hair constructs and styles are singled out for different treatment because they do not conform to normative standers for other races.” The EEOC’s district director pointed out that “generally, there are racial distinctions in the natural texture of black and non-black hair. The EEOC will not tolerate employment discrimination against African-American employees because they choose to wear and display the natural texture of their hair, manage and style their hair in a manner amenable to it, or manage and style their hair in a manner differently from non-blacks.”
A federal judge in Alabama didn’t buy the government’s seemingly far-fetched argument and in 2014 dismissed the race discrimination suit, finding that the company’s hairstyle policy did not violate federal anti-discrimination law. In his ruling the judge, Charles R. Butler, wrote that since Title VII of the Civil Rights Act only prohibits discrimination based on unchangeable characteristics, like sex and race, the company didn’t violate the law by banning the hairstyle. The Obama administration appealed and this month the Atlanta-based 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals upheld the Alabama judge’s decision, rejecting Jones’s right to keep the dreadlocks. The appellate court found that Catastrophe Management Solutions has a “race-neutral grooming policy” and that hairstyles are not “immutable physical characteristics,” though the court acknowledged they could be “culturally associated with race.”
On the EEOC’s twitter account, which is embedded in the agency’s official website, an official comments on the Jones case: “I wonder if a woman who wore a hijab would have been asked to not wear that when coming to work?” The EEOC post was written by a black official named Michelle Adams, who also includes a clip from a 1990s television comedy sitcom because it reminds her of Jones’s “choice to fight” the dreadlock ban (the reality is that taxpayers funded the fight because a federal agency represented Jones). In the TV clip a black male employee tells white managers that his hair is not just for fashion. “It’s part of my heritage,” the actor says. “It’s a statement of pride.”
The question comparing dreadlocks to hijabs was rhetorical because the EEOC employee knows Muslims have a legal right to wear religious head covers at work thanks to litigation initiated by her agency. Judicial Watch has reported on some of the cases, including a 2013 federal court ruling that a Muslim woman’s civil rights were violated by an American clothing retailer that didn’t allow her to wear a hijab at work. As it has in other instances, the EEOC accused the retailer of religious discrimination under the Civil Rights Act and a federal judge agreed. In the ruling the judge wrote that the retailer acted with malice and reckless indifference by forcing the Muslim woman to remove her hijab, even though it had a company-wide policy prohibiting all types head cover.
The religious rights argument has also been used by the EEOC on behalf of dreadlocks. Over the summer the EEOC sued a private business for religious discrimination after it ordered a male employee to cut his dreadlocks. The man, a prep cook in central Florida, is Rastafari and the “Afrocentric” religion born in the slums of Jamaica requires followers to have long, matted and knotted hair. Judicial Watch will monitor the outcome of the case, which was filed in July. There is no formal, organized leadership in Rastafarianism which makes it difficult to accept as an official religion protected by federal law. Rastafarians believe Haile Selassie, the former emperor of Ethiopia, is God and that he’ll help blacks living in exile as a result of the slave trade return to Africa. Jamaican reggae singer Bob Marley, who died in Miami in 1981, was among the best known Rastafarians and more recently a famous rapper known as Snoop Dogg became Rastafari and changed his name to Snoop Lion, according to a mainstream news report. “A key belief for Rastas is the notion of death to all white and black oppressors,” the story says, adding that “the most common outward expressions of Rastafari are Rastas’ dreadlocks, penchant for smoking marijuana and vegetarian diets.”
There is no such thing as racial distinction, we are all exactly the same. I get told this all the time, it must be true.
The Hijab is cultural, not religious.
Unfortunately, no young American product of our government schools is equipped with a proper history or historical perspective, so this, though regrettable, is yet understandable.
I’ve seen plenty of whites with dreads, usually undesirables of one sort or another. Nothing racial about bad taste in personal appearance!
I agree and believe employers have a right to have grooming standards, happy to see the appeals court upheld the lower court.
It is definitely something that is changeable.
Workplaces had “no beards” policies for all or certain levels of men in management. Dress codes. Like no flip flops or sweatpants in the office.
Good grief. All this stuff now needs to be spelled out the day of hire on signed documents, that the person knows what is expected and that they can be fired for violating what they are agreeing to and accept by signing the documents. Company does so to be totally up front with potential employees and not have anything be a surprise to them about how the company works or what is considered appropriate (whatever) and inappropriate.
"The EEOC argued that the company, Catastrophe Management Solutions, committed racial discrimination in violation of Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964."
FR: Never Accept the Premise of Your Opponent’s Argument
Patriots, we need to demand that the corrupt federal government, especially the Supreme Court, references specific constitutional clauses to justify its actions and decisions, not post-17th Amedment, constitutionally indefensible federal laws like Title VII.
From related threads ...
Note that the only race-based right that the states have amended the Constitution to expressly protect deals with voting rights as evidenced by the 15th Amendment. But since this insurance company issue is clearly outside the scope of voting rights, the feds have no constitutional authority to stick their big noses in this politically correct discrimination / diversity issue.
Note that a previous generation of state sovereignty-respecting justices had clarified that powers that the states haven’t expressly constitutionally delegated to the feds are prohibited to the feds, the so-called power to address racial issues outside the scope of voting rights in this example.
”From the accepted doctrine that the United States is a government of delegated powers, it follows that those not expressly granted, or reasonably to be implied from such as are conferred, are reserved to the states, or to the people. To forestall any suggestion to the contrary, the Tenth Amendment was adopted. The same proposition, otherwise stated, is that powers not granted are prohibited [emphasis added].” —United States v. Butler, 1936.
In fact, even if the states had expressly constitutionally protected against discrimination outside the scope of voting issues, note that the Supreme Court had clarified in United States v. Cruikshank that enumerated constitutional rights protect citizens only from actions of the state and federal governments, not from individual citizens.
Consider that the unconstitutinally big federal government has historically been known to exploit politically correct issues to try unconstitutionally expand its powers, this insurance company dress code an example of this imo.
In fact, James Madison and Thomas Jefferson had warned patriots to be on their guard against the feds unconstitutionally expanding their power in subtle ways, this lawsuit a good example of this imo.
”I believe there are more instances of the abridgement of freedom of the people by gradual and silent encroachments by those in power than by violent and sudden usurpations.” —James Madison, Speech at the Virginia Convention to ratify the Federal Constitution (1788-06-06)
”To take a single step beyond the boundaries thus specially drawn around the powers of Congress, is to take possession of a boundless field of power, no longer susceptible of any definition.” —Thomas Jefferson, Jefferson's Opinion on the Constitutionality of a National Bank : 1791
”The system of the General Government is to seize all doubtful ground. We must join in the scramble, or get nothing. Where first occupancy is to give right, he who lies still loses all.” —Thomas Jefferson to James Monroe, 1797.
Remember in November !
Patriots need to support Trump / Pence by also electing a new, state sovereignty-respecting Congress that will not only work within its constitutional Article I, Section 8-limited powers to support Trump’s vision for making America great again for everybody, but will also put a stop to unconstitutonal federal taxes and likewise unconstitutional inteference in state affairs as evidenced by misguided discrimination lawsuits.
Note that such a Congress will also probably be willing to fire state sovereignty-ignoring activist justices.
Dreadlocks always look so filthy!
There’s a big difference between so called “dreadlocks” like Rastafarians wear and “locks”.
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