The details are as yet scant, but what has been offered so far doesn’t seem to indicate that she was playing a character. She was just a hotel receptionist. If Disney’s story amounts to “well, our brand image is upset if anyone sees someone overtly wearing something that an observant Muslim woman would wear” then that would be … interesting.
If it indeed was taking them months to design a hijab that she could wear on the job, one wonders what the delay was … were they trying to come up with a hijab that wasn’t recognizable as a hijab? That again might count against them.
My tentative guess is that we’re not really going to see any of these issues resolved because Disney will give in before it gets too far.
One certainly hopes so. Anyway, my main thought in regard to the hijab design was, “It’s a friggin’ piece of cloth*. How long does it take to design a cloth to match a hotel uniform? An hour? Maybe?”
*Yes, I know, some hijabs are shaped. Others are not.
It’s only the fact that Disney have allowed things to go this far that makes me question whether there is more to this than meets the eye.
Why would they waste money and allow themselves to suffer adverse publicity (unless that are going for the ‘right wing nut job’ market) on a case that, on the face of it, seems unwinnable?
I don’t know. How many pieces of costume design have you done for multi-million dollar theatrical productions?
In my youth, I worked both in dinner theater and in an Equity house on a long-running, very well known production. In the dinner theater, a multi-thousnad dolar production ( ), the costume designer took about a week to handle minor costume design changes. In the major production, I have no idea, because there were none permitted; even the tiniest details were locked in stone and required an act of God (the producers) to change anything.
Yes, I’m aware that costume costumes take time to change. But as you recall, it seemed in this case that Disney was using the word “costume” for what we would call a “uniform”.
In this case, it would be establishing a uniform hijab for all future workers, so I can imagine it might kind of have to go past lawyers and possibly up to the board level, it not only being all-affecting, but politically sensitive.
Remember, this is a place that made the cast members wear Disney’s underpants, not theirs.
Forgive my ignorance, but isn’t that what a uniform is?
Also, to answer the question you put to me a while ago: yes, I’d agree that Disney’s offer to design a dress code compliant hijab is a reasonable accommodation, provided that the plaintiff be permitted to wear her own hijab until the company-supplied one was made available.
I can’t resist playing devil’s advocate here a bit…
Let’s say that a woman works at Hooters for several years. She is doing very well for herself in today’s horrible economy. Jobs that pay as much money as she is able to earn are basically nonexistent. She fears that if she quit her Hooters job she would not be able to find another job that pays equally as well.
The woman converts to the Islamic religion and now feels she must dress very conservatively. A Muslim friend of mine always wears long pants, long sleeves, and her headscarf. All of her clothing must also be very loose. So let’s assume that this is the way our waitress also wants to dress.
Dressing this way would greatly impact the brand that Hooters has created but does not in any way impact the woman’s ability to perform typical waitressing duties.
Is it permissible for Hooters to then require this woman to work in the back away from customers?
Well, I guess we’ll see what the EEOC and/or the reviewing court says.
In my view, it’s reasonable for Disney to design a dress code compliant hijab and ask her to work out of customer sight (wearing her own) until the company-supplied one was made available.
I’d want to be guided by a bit more developed record before answering that. If Disney said, for example, “We need six months, because we have one part-time designer assigned to the task, and she just went on maternity leave,” I’d be hesitant to find that reasonable.
But if their evidence painted a picture of a reasonable staffing effort and showed other costume change requests, especially changes desired by the company, moving through a similar process and with similar time results, I’d be more inclined to credit the reasonableness of it. Obviously, the longer the delay, the more skepticism I’d have.
But two months doesn’t strike me as presumptively unreasonable. Forty-eight months does.
I tried the Hooters argument several pages ago. No one bit on it . Why? Its anyone’s guess, but I suspect it has a lot to do with the fact that people want to have an expectation of what they’ll see if they go to Hooters and they don’t want to imagine a government mandated rule which would allow the Hooters staff to dress more conservatively. An extreme example of course is a Hooters staffed by Muslims wearing niqabs.
Dressing sexfully is a BFOQ at Hooters. The law may be an ass, but it is not so daft as to fail to understand the Hooters business model nor so priggish (fever dreams of “political correctness” run amok notwithstanding) as to endeavor to outlaw it.
So, do you see a distinction between the Hooter’s business model and the Disney model that would call for government intervention in the case of one corporation opposed to a religious employee’s needs and not the other?
), the costume designer took about a week to handle minor costume design changes. In the major production, I have no idea, because there were none permitted; even the tiniest details were locked in stone and required an act of God (the producers) to change anything.
Did they have inspections?