Title VII Religious and Race Discrimination: Key Case Law

Introduction to Title VII and Employer Obligations

The relationship between statute and case law is illustrated vividly in two significant employment discrimination matters decided under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, 42 U.S.C. § 2000e-2(a). Title VII requires employers to accommodate the "sincerely held" religious beliefs of employees and applicants unless doing so imposes an "undue hardship," generally defined as anything more than a de minimis or token cost (Mitchell, 2005). The two cases examined here — Cloutier v. Costco and EEOC v. Abercrombie & Fitch — demonstrate how courts and the EEOC have interpreted and applied these statutory obligations in the context of employer dress codes, grooming standards, and hiring and marketing practices.

Cloutier v. Costco: Religious Accommodation and Dress Codes

In Cloutier v. Costco, 390 F.3d 126 (2004), Kimberly Cloutier alleged that her employer, Costco Wholesale Corp., failed to offer her a reasonable accommodation after she informed it of a conflict between the "no facial jewelry" provision of its dress code and her religious practice as a member of the Church of Body Modification (CBM) (Body piercing, religion and the workplace, 2005). She argued that this failure amounted to religious discrimination in violation of Title VII and the corresponding Massachusetts statute, Mass. Gen. Laws ch. 151B, § 4(1A).

While working in a front-end position at Costco, Cloutier began body piercing to follow the tenets of CBM, a religious organization that encourages its members to "grow as individuals through body modification and its teachings" and to be "confident role models in learning, teaching, and displaying body modification" (Mitchell, 2005). When Costco attempted to enforce a new "no piercings" dress code, Cloutier proposed covering her pierced eyebrow with a flesh-colored bandage, which Costco rejected. When she was eventually terminated for excessive absences, she filed a charge of religiously based discrimination with the EEOC. Costco then offered to accept the bandage accommodation, which Cloutier now rejected as contrary to her beliefs. The EEOC found discrimination, and Cloutier sued in the U.S. District Court.

Court Rulings and the Undue Hardship Standard

The district court granted summary judgment for Costco, concluding that it had reasonably accommodated Cloutier by offering to reinstate her if she covered her facial piercing with a bandage (Body piercing, religion and the workplace, 2005). The court held that Costco had no further duty to accommodate Cloutier because it could not do so without undue hardship. Ruling that undue hardship encompasses both economic costs — such as lost business or the need to hire additional employees — and non-economic costs — such as compromising the integrity of a seniority system — the court concluded that the burden to Costco of violating an important personal appearance policy outweighed the religious need of an employee to visibly express her beliefs through piercing.

This case carries strong implications for an employer's right to set reasonable grooming standards even when those standards come into conflict with an employee's religious beliefs. Where accommodating a belief would require the employer to abandon a legitimate and significant workplace policy, courts have been willing to find that the resulting burden rises to the level of undue hardship under Title VII.

EEOC v. Abercrombie & Fitch: Hiring, Marketing, and Discrimination

EEOC v. Abercrombie & Fitch Stores, Inc., Case No. CV-04-4731 SI, was filed on November 10, 2004, in the United States District Court for the Northern District of California in San Francisco (EEOC agrees to landmark resolution of discrimination case against Abercrombie & Fitch, 2004). The lawsuit alleged that Abercrombie & Fitch, which operates a nationwide chain of retail stores, violated Title VII by maintaining recruiting and hiring practices that excluded minorities and women, and by adopting a restrictive marketing image and other policies that limited minority and female employment.

The case is significant because it considered not only diversity in hiring, but also marketing, procurement, and recruitment materials. Because the company's marketing campaign incorporated its employees as models, the EEOC took the position that the marketing campaign itself reflected and reinforced the lack of diversity in the company's workforce (EEOC agrees to landmark resolution of discrimination case against Abercrombie & Fitch, 2004).