An End to “Long-Haired Freaky People Need Not Apply”?
“Signs” of the Times: An End to “Long-Haired Freaky People Need Not Apply”? Sean C. Pierce Harbuck Keith & Holmes LLC Coming on the heels of United Parcel Service, Inc.’s seminal case on pregnancy discrimination, Young v. United Parcel Service, Inc., 135 S. Ct. 1338 (2015), the world’s largest package delivery company was recently also ensnared in a religious discrimination claim. UPS agreed to pay $4.9 million and provide other relief to settle a class-action religious discrimination lawsuit filed by the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC). The suit was resolved with a five-year consent decree entered in Eastern District of New York on December 21, 2018. EEOC v. United Parcel Service, Inc., Civil Action No. 1:15-cv-04141. The EEOC alleged UPS prohibited male employees in supervisory or customer-contact positions, including delivery drivers, from wearing beards or growing their hair below collar length. The EEOC also alleged that UPS failed to hire or promote individuals whose religious practices conflict with its appearance policy and failed to provide religious accommodations to its appearance policy at facilities throughout the U.S. The EEOC further alleged that UPS segregated employees who maintained beards or long hair in accordance with their religious beliefs into non-supervisory, back-of-the- facility positions without customer contact. These claims fell within the EEOC’s animosity to employer inflexibility as to religious “dress and grooming” practices, examples of which include wearing religious clothing or articles (e.g., a Muslim hijab (headscarf), a Sikh turban, or a Christian cross); observing a religious prohibition against wearing certain garments (e.g., a Muslim, Pentecostal Christian, or Orthodox Jewish woman’s practice of not wearing pants or short skirts), or adhering to shaving or hair length observances (e.g., Sikh uncut hair and beard, Rastafarian dreadlocks, or Jewish peyes (sidelocks)).
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