EEOC V. Abercrombie And Fitch Stores, Inc : The Case Of Samantha Elauc Case

The U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) holds the responsibility of enforcing federal laws that make it illegal to discriminate against a job applicant or an employee based on a person’s race, color, religion, sex (including pregnancy, gender identity and sexual orientation, national origin, age (40 or older), disability and/or genetic information (U.S. EEOC, 2016a). The EEOC laws cover most employers with at least fifteen employees as well as labor unions and employment agencies (U.S. EEOC, 2016a). The EEOC has the ability to investigate charges of alleged discrimination against employees who are employed by organizations covered by the EEOC. The EEOC not only uses these investigations to protect alleged victims, they also use them as an education tool for organizations. The EEOC conducted an investigation based on racial discrimination in the EEOC v. Alliant Techsystems case, which was settled in 2012 when they paid the alleged victim in relief expenses.

Around November 2008, Dillard’s engaged in unlawful employment practices at its Cary, North Carolina location in violation of the Age Discrimination of Employment Act when it terminated Virginia Keene, a 61 year old woman, from her position ("Dillard 's sued by EEOC for age discrimination", 2010). She was an Area Sales Manager and was in charge of the Children’s and Accessories Departments and oversaw the sales associates who worked in her two departments. While she worked at Dillard’s, her managers repeatedly made verbal remarks to the fact that she was much older than the other five Area

Facts: This is a Title VII action alleging harassment based on national origin and religion. The facts are set forth in the light most favorable to Rafiq. On May 11, 2001, Mohommed Rafiq was hired as a car salesman. Rafiq was born in India and is a practicing Muslim. The alleged harassment began on September 11, 2001. When he arrived for work that afternoon, his co-workers were watching news coverage of the terrorist attacks and one of them asked him in a mocking way, "Where have you been?", as if to infer that he had participated in the attacks.

This act was setup to address discrimination of protected classes (e.g. African Americans, Asian, Americans, Latinos, Native Americans, and women). The part of Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 that applies to employment decisions; mandates that employment decisions not be based on race, color, religion, sex, or national origin (Gmoez-Mejia & Cardy, 2013).” Discrimination is about the making of distinctions; in the context of human resources, it is about the making of distinctions among people. There are two type of discrimination. Disparate treatment is when an employee is treated differently because of his protected status. Adverse impact is when the same standard is applied across the board; however it impacts a protected class more (Gmoez-Mejia & Cardy, 2013).In the case of #1-2013 adverse impact could apply to the shift changes that were implemented in January 2013. As the shift changes applied to all production employees. This could be construed as unintentional discrimination. However we haven’t had any other complaints to date.The company must reasonably accommodate religious beliefs or practices; unless it creates undue hardship (e.g. costly, compromises workplace safety, decreases workplace efficiency, infringes on the rights of other employees, or requires other employees to do more than their share of potentially hazardous or burdensome work). There are several ways

Jennifer alleges that she was terminated because of her pregnancy. She neglects the fact that Greene’s discharged her because her position, junior executive secretary, is redundant to the company. It is transparently that Jennifer is a member of protected class and was dismissed. Yet Greene’s did not violate The Pregnancy Discrimination Act (PDA) under Title VII. According to Title VII 42 U.S.C. § 2000e-2(a), it is an unlawful employment practice if an employer discharges any individual because of such individual 's race,

Recognized for good-looking, all-American, and typically white male and female clothing models, Abercrombie & Fitch has develop into a special type of model of late-a model of asserted employment discrimination (Stephanie 2005). The clothing idol lately cleared up two private class actions and a civil action law suits by the United States Equal Employment Opportunity Commission ("EEOC") by consenting to compensate more than $40 million to African American, Hispanic, and Asian plaintiffs who claimed that Abercrombie discriminated against them (Stephanie 2005); Abercrombie in addition entered into a agreement with the EEOC recognized as a Consent Decree. In Gonzalez, et al. v. Abercrombie, et al., West v. Abercrombie, et al., and EEOC v. Abercrombie & Fitch Stores, Inc., the plaintiffs disputed that they were either restricted to low visibility, back-of-the-store kind jobs or laid off and fired on the basis of their race or ethnicity.

The United States is one of the most culturally and religiously diverse countries in the world. The founding fathers of the United States wanted to ensure that its people would have the ability to practice their religion with no threat of persecution. In order to accomplish the goal of religious freedom and continue to ensure that all people of any religion would be free to practice their religion, the United States passed Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 that prohibits an employer from discriminating based on the religious views of its employees. As the citizens of the United States spend a large amount of time in their places of employment, religious practices that these employees feel are necessary for the true observance of their religion must be accommodated by the employers. This law contends that in cases where the accommodation of religious practices of its employees does not create undue hardships, an employer must make reasonable accommodations for employees to practices the beliefs of their religion. As the demographics of the United States continues to change with more religiously diverse people immigrating to the country, employers are coming under more pressure to ensure they are taking all possible precautions to accommodate the religious practices of its employees. These precautions are important as the once an employee has established a bona fide complaint of religious discrimination, the burden of proof then falls on the employer to prove they

A woman from South Carolina was denied unemployment benefits because of her religious beliefs. She was a Seventh Day Adventist who worshipped on Saturday. Her place of work originally only operated five days a week. Sherbert converted to Seventh Day Adventist and began to worship on Saturday. Her work then decided to be open six days a week including Saturday. She then refused to work on Saturday her day of worship and was fired because of it. After being fired she looked for a new job but could not find one that would accept

Gwendolyn I. Cooper v. Oak Rubber Company 15 F.3d 1375 (6th Cir 1994) case supports our recommendation of litigation because Cooper could not establish prima facie case of discrimination, that Oak reasonably accommodated her religious beliefs. The district court concluded that Oak could not have relieved Cooper all Saturday work responsibility without suffering undue hardship, i.e., the need to hire another employee or a resulting loss of production.

Jacqueline Cote, and her wife Diana Smithson were employees for Walmart for about 15 years. However, Cote’s sued (for cost of caring) when Smithson developed ovarian cancer. Walmart denied the health insurance policy to cover both of them as soon as both of them left (Cote’s had to take care of Smithson). Lydia DePillis, a reporter who writes for Washington Post, stated. “Last week, a notice seeking others affected by Walmart's actions went out to the 1,200 current and former employees who enrolled a same-sex spouse in the retailer's health plan after Jan. 1, 2014. The class action argues that, because the Civil Rights Act prohibits discrimination on the basis of sex, they should have been receiving benefits even before the Supreme Court invalidated the Defense of Marriage Act” (1). DePillis insists that just because someone is gay, they should not be discriminated. African Americans are too entitled to their have rights which protect them, and should set all that aside to work in an equal environment, after all workplaces is one of many where people should feel the same as everyone

Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 is a federal Law that prohibits employers from discriminating against employees on the grounds of sex, race, color, national origin and religion (www.aauw.org). Thus far in our lectures we have discussed the strategies used by various minority groups who have been discriminated against in violation of Title VII. There has been land mark decisions made from the hard fought fights by, African Americans, Women, Mexicans and Jewish alike. Their challenges of non-compliance and enforcement of Title VII brought successes that didn’t come without sacrifice, division and in some cases physical harm.

You have raised some great points as to J.C. encounter of unlawful religious discrimination. As you said J.C. tried to compromise with his employer by packing or wearing his dreads in a neat and professional matter. But as a result his employer refused which resulted in J.C. losing his job. I agree with your analysis that the company's actions toward J.C. is violation of Title VII. However I also believe that it is a violation of his first amendment right. As a citizen of this so called great land, we are allowed to practice our religion and face no form of discrimination. This case not only describes a violation against Title VII but also the first amendment

Cheryl Perich was an employer of the Hosanna-Tabor Evangelical Lutheran Church and School and filled an employment discrimination suit for alleged violation of the Americans with Disabilities Act. Cheryl became sick and left work to be on disability, but then was not able to return to her position and allegedly urged to resign. When she refused resignation, her employer Hosanna fired her. The EEOC then filed a discrimination suit against Hosanna-Tabor, which was dismissed. Upon the appeal by Perich and the EEOC, courts ruled that Perich was not a ministerial employee and the case must be retried on the merit of the discrimination claims. In this case, 10-553, the appeal was reversed and the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that Hosanna-Tabor’s actions were lawful.

The root cause in the Abercrombie and Fitch case was the company’s practice was to focus their recruiting and hiring of a sales persons around their image, which was around the mantra of “an all American Classic look” and they shied away from individuals that did not fit that mold. Due to this behavior, the company was hit with a lawsuit in 2003 that alleged they violated Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 by placing a targeted focus on their recruiting and hiring that essentially excluded or limited its minority and female workforce population (Wikipedia, 2017).

According to Keyton, organizational culture is "the set of artifacts, values, and assumptions that emerges from the interactions of organizational members" (Keyton, 2014, p. 550). Over the past few years, past and potential employees of the clothing brand Abercrombie & Fitch (A&F) have taken to the media to explain the negative organizational culture that exists within the company. The management values and company policies that create this “image-obsessed culture” have led to multiple human rights lawsuits, which has damaged the reputation of Abercrombie & Fitch globally (Benson, 2013).