You are simply wrong. The Supreme Court has made it clear that private employers can not discriminate on the basis of religion and do have to make “reasonable” accommadations of people’s religion.
You may want to forbid your Jewish male employees from wearing yarmulkas and may want to force them to work on Yom Kippur, but you have the burden of proof to show that not being allowed to do so would be a problem.
Beyond that, based on your reasoning, the state of Alabama can also establish state religions because the legislature of Alabama is not “Congress”.
I don’t mean to come across as being obnoxious, but you might want to consult legal scholars before making such claims.
I think that certain employer actions that might be a red flag of discriminatory activity should receive extra scrutiny, and that prohibiting headgear should probably be on that list. But unless a pattern of discrimination on the basis of race or religion is discovered the employer shouldn’t be sanctioned.
People can certainly feel strongly about their sports loyalties, I don’t know why religious traditions should get an extra level of accommodation than other things people choose to do. To do so is to favor religion over lack of religion.
Let’s review the Civil Rights Act of 1964. Wikipedia:
I don’t know whether the under 15 employees exemption still applies. But it seems to me that curbs on religious garments fall under Title VII scrutiny. This seems appropriate as there is a long history of religious discrimination. Discrimination based on sport teams, not so much. Civil Rights Act of 1964 - Wikipedia
We don’t tend to take pictures, but I do have and have posted myself in a simple elizabethan, a friend’s red elizabethan and a late period simple mongolian del. I keep promising myself to take pictures, but I tend to forget where the damned camera got put, or we forgot to pack the damned thing. sigh Well, I also detest pictures of myself.
There is a huge difference between a hairstyle, a wig, a man’s hat/cap/turban and a hijab designed to cover the face. The others do not cover the face.
Well, I would imagine the desire not to get whacked upside the head by a father, brother, husband or son. conformity can and does get enforced. You think a woman wants to get stoned or imprisoned for being raped? I assure you, her desire was not to be raped in the first place. Same goes for the lesser “rules” of religions - hair, clothing, mannerisms. Many of these poor women have to exist in an enclave of their countrymen and still live en famille under the same restrictive laws they had back in the old country.
Since the overwhelming majority if Muslim women in Europe don’t wear Burqas or Niqabs, this is highly unlikely. In fact, quite often they’re rebelling against their families and demonstrating their piety.
Lots of people who feel that American women who adopt what one wag called “the prostitute look” are degrading themselves, being forced into it by a male dominated society, blah, blah, blah, but we don’t assume they’re doing it to avoid getting beaten up.
The same is true for western Muslims who choose to wear Burqas or Niqabs.
I don’t like the idea of men telling women what they can and can not wear.
Thankfully, the courts believe in protecting religious expression.
Because religious expression is protected by the Constitution, and has a long history of discrimination against those who don’t practice the “right” religion.
This warrants an extra level of vigilance in protecting the rights of religious expression. But to force employers to accommodate the choices of their employees simply because those choices have a religious motivation is to favor religion and to favor religious people over the non religious.
So say you have two situations with two different employers, one with an employee who needs a day off for a religious holiday and is refused, and one who needs the day off for the release of Grand Theft Auto and is refused. The former case would be an indication of possible discrimination that might warrant more investigation to see if there was a pattern of bias, while the latter would not. But if it can not be determined that there was any bias on the basis of religion, ethnicity, or gender then the case of the religious holiday should be treated just like other popular interests.
Businesses should make these accommodations, It is both morally and practically the right thing to do. And for those reasons our public institutions should make them. But private businesses should not be forced to do so as long as their motivations don’t cross the line between indifference to religion and bias against religion or religious groups.
Are you denying that a niqab and accompanying garb is insulating? How strange. I’ll bet you’ve never worn one.
In effect, bias can be enforced with a dress code. But we can go beyond that: it is impossible to separate an employee’s attire from the impressions that it creates in the minds of others, especially clients, or the physical limitations it might place on the wearer. I would question the impact of this new addition on the office overall - to what degree is this self-isolating person going to contribute. I would also prefer to know what the employee looks like. Most people would. The person trying to be all but invisible is at a disadvantage, and no accusation, no appealing to higher principles is going to overcome that.
If most are coerced into it, or are rebellious young things who shroud themselves for the same reasons others pierce the hell out of their faces, it’s a self-correcting problem – they’ll find something, but it’s probably out of the mainstream, and wasn’t that the whole point in the first place?
And if there’s no clear business reason why a telephone correspondent can’t wear a niqab or yarmulka to the office, that would represent evidence of bias. Whether such evidence would be sufficiently compelling to trigger Title VII sanction would be for a court to decide. I contend that such requirements would not be a particularly arduous burden on an firm with more than 15 employees.
Facial expressions are a very important part of communication. For healthcare workers, that can be particularly important - your patients may not be able to hear at all, may be confused or in great pain so need non-verbal cues more, may be upset so would benefit from a reassuring smile, etc, etc. This applies even to receptionists. There are some back-office staff who don’t interact with the public at all, so perhaps they could argue that there is no practical reason for them not to wear a niqab. Their colleagues might appreciate being able to see their facial expressions, but that’s an arguable point. Patients being able to see them is inarguably essential. Niqabs also make speech slightly less clear, which could be a problem.
Kimstu’s post was brilliant, though, about the reasons why the niqab is supposed to be used and why that makes it irrelevant once you’re interacting with the world on a larger basis than grocery shopping.
I live in an area with a very high number of Muslims, and a lot of the people I encounter at the bank, at hospital receptions, etc, wear hijabs, but not niqabs.
A lot of the older Muslim girls at my daughter’s school (which is 95% Muslim) wear hijabs too, but not niqabs. Wearing one would make life harder for them, too, and perhaps the families who feel really strongly about it send their daughters to the local Muslim private girls’ school for reasons other than the niqab. They wouldn’t need to wear one there either if their teachers were female.
I understand that most of these women are young religious nutjobs who decided to wear the burkhah by themselves, not out of family tradition, and who tend to be married to male young religious nutjobs.
It might or it might not. An employer could be completely indifferent to her employees religious beliefs and just not like hats in the workplace. The Civil Rights Act outlaws discrimination, it does not guarantee accommodation. To force an employer to accommodate choices that their employees make, simply because those choices are religiously motivated, is wrong, and favors the religious over the non-religious.
What if an employer did not want to allow their employee to wear a burqa for the same reason that they would not allow them to come to work in Klu Klux Klan attire?
They are both tools of physical control of the bodies of others, and both are traditions with religious associations. The burqa is used to deny women a public identity as a part of intimidating, physically controlling, and often terrorizing her. While the Klan hood shielded the identity of terrorists as they intimidated and often terrorized the first generations of freed slaves.
Muslim women in the West might not regularly be coerced into wearing face coverings, but that can not be said about any neighborhood of the world where the practice is widespread, and many women in the West originate from those areas, all of which are characterized by a system of horrible brutality towards women, a system that the face covering is a component of.
What if one of my employees is a refugee from Yemen who had to watch her sister be stoned to death for being raped? Should she be forced, in the name of religious freedom, to work in an environment with this potent symbol of brutal repression?
That is certainly the case in the Netherlands. There were about 27 niquab wearers in a polulation of 17 million Dutch.
The hijab (headscarf that covers the hair and maybe the neck) is a totally different matter . Hijab is worn by most Muslim women, ranging from first generation immigrants, second generation integrated homemakers, to well adjusted female law students at university.
We appear to be in partial agreement, since “Evidence of bias” does not imply “Compelling evidence of bias”. What I tried to express was that I thought a niqab wearer had cause for judicial review: I didn’t want to imply that their evidence would be sufficient to guarantee court victory. (IANAL)
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To force an employer to accommodate choices that their employees make, simply because those choices are religiously motivated, is wrong, and favors the religious over the non-religious.
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Then you are in disagreement with the Civil Rights Act of 1964. I don’t think the Act puts undue burden on business.
I cannot believe how some people react to this situation; I feel there is a deep seated Islamophobia behind much of the reaction.
(First an indication of how I am not supporting that which I do not support- please don’t accuse me of beliefs I do not have. I think that wearing face coverings, middle eastern clothing and other such garb is a guaranteed way to increase overt discrimination against people who choose so to do. The same goes for Hasidic Jews, Jamaican descendants with tea cosy hats and other stigmata of belonging to a potentially devalued group. That said I can see no place in the law to ban these displays except for rational and just cause.)
Let us start from basics. Most advanced countries have an expression in their laws that guarantee a right to expression of belief. Even France- who may find that their law is a clear breach of the European Convention on Human Rights which guarantees Freedom of Expression. Wearing face coverings or items of clothing in support of religious or cultural beliefs should be protected as free expression. This should not stop employers from refusing to employ people who do not abide by the requirements of a job. I have a right to wear a tee shirt that is offensive and would make me unemployable, and so should any other person be free to do so, as long as they accept the consequences. Now the state may make reasonable rules about such things- no nudity, no face coverings in areas with security provisions, passport and other photographs and so on. But any hint that it is directed against religious or cultural expressions as such should be illegal. Similarly banks and such can insist that face coverings such as crash helmets or headscarves or hoodies which obscure identity should be disallowed.
It should be noted that in the UK there is a plan to ban face coverings in public, but mainly because of the use of balaclavas stopping police photographing and identifying people on the spectrum between protester and violent rioter.
Finally, on the point of the sexism in the use of face coverings, I offer a link to a recent opinion column which links the decision to take ones husband’s name on marriage can be seen as sexist and old fashioned if forced, but liberating and modern if taken by free decision. In my experience, many young women of Asian/Islamic background happily dress modestly and use a small face covering and cover their hair, believing that they are rejecting an overweening free-sex culture of the West. Who are we to subvert their choice.
Let us try to use reason rather than passion in this matter.
Correct, religious belief is not sufficient reason for going against the dress code you signed up to.
Or if it is then my own deep-seated cultural preference should be given the same weight.
This is as far as I’d go. Wear what you like in the privacy of your own own home but if a public space or private business sets a minimum or maximum standard of dress then it either applies to all or none. Giving special dispensation to religions seems flat out wrong.
I think that was a particularly confused article from someone who is normally reasonable and eloquent. The taking of a name is symbolic and carries no physical consequences.
The person is still free to use whatever name they like and I cannot imagine that the decision to retain your old name would elicit any more than a shrug.
The same cannot be said of the choice of dress within Islamic culture, nor are the consequences of non-conformance the same. I simply don’t think the two issues exist in the same ball-park.
I agree, and that’s the law to a certain point. Religion is a protected constitutional right and many groups have been discriminated against based on religion. So we hold such beliefs in higher esteem than other things.
If the work dress code says no hats, then I can’t wear a Pittsburgh Pirates hat. Period. No special dispensation because they just made the playoffs after 20 years. Even if I really, really like the Pirates.
A yarmulke? That’s an item of religious expression and an article of faith. We take a seemingly smaller step by asking the employer if there is any way that he can make a reasonable accommodation to allow it. In most cases, the employer can. The reason for a “no hats” policy in a dress code is because you don’t want everyone wearing Pirates hats, sombreros, and $3 hats that say “I only fuck when I’m drunk.”
Such a generic policy is for fashion sense and most employers don’t care to waive it for an article of religious faith. I don’t see a problem with that even if I can’t wear a baseball cap. I think the law is spot on where it is.
