Abercrombie Headscarf Case

Can Abercrombie & Fitch deny a Muslim teenager a sales job because she wears a headscarf? Abercrombie says head-coverings of any kind would have interfered with the preppy image they wanted to portray.

But the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) concluded that the company discriminated against the teenager on the basis of religion when they did not offer her an accommodation. The case is now before the Supreme Court and the justices heard oral arguments today.

At stake is whether it is incumbent on an employer to inquire about an employee’s religion or whether it’s incumbent on the employee to inform the employer of his or her religion. The EEOC says that applicants should not have to notify their employer of their religion, especially when they have no reason to believe that it will interfere with their job.

In the clip above, the PBS News Hour reviews the backgrounds of the case and below, Nina Totenberg reviews the oral arguments before the court today on National Public Radio. She notes that the justices seemed to lean toward  protecting religious freedom. In addition, the ScotusBlog has an excellent preview of the arguments.

My religion students studied the case several months ago when we reviewed several other cases that concerned freedom of region.