Refusing to hire someone because of their dreadlocks is legal, according to a ruling from the 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, reports NBC News.
The ruling came after a lawsuit was filed by Equal Employment Opportunity Commission against Catastrophe Management Solutions in Mobile, Alabama.
The EEOC was working on behalf of Chastity Jones, whose job offer was rescinded by Catastrophe Management Solutions because of her dreadlocks. According to the case file, the human resources manager, Jeannie Wilson, addressed Jones’ dreadlocks in a private hiring meeting, writes the television news outlet.
“They tend to get messy, although I’m not saying yours are, but you know what I’m talking about,” Wilson told Jones, the report says. Wilson then claimed that CMS would not hire Jones if she continued to have her hair in locks and eventually terminated her job offer.
The EEOC argued that this was a violation of the Civil Rights Act of 1964’s Title VII. They made the case that dreadlocks are a “racial characteristic” that have been used to stereotype African-Americans as “not team players” and unqualified for the workplace. Lawyers argued dreadlocks don’t fit a grooming policy is inherently discriminatory, the report says.
The court of appeals rejected the argument, saying, CMS’s “race-neutral grooming policy” was not discriminatory. They continued that though locks my be “culturally associated with race,” they are not “immutable physical characteristics.” In other words, the panel argued traits that are tied to a culture but are also changeable can be used to deny a job if the traits “don’t adhere to a policy.”
Title VII of the Civil Rights Act has often been used to only protect against “immutable characteristics” and not cultural practices. In Garcia v. Gloor, the courts once again ruled against the plaintiff, asserting that being fired for speaking Spanish at work in spite of an English-only policy did not violate Title VII.
Dreadlocks have constantly been policed not just in the workplace, but in schools with various instances of Black employers policing Black hair.
SOURCE: NBC News
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Employers Can Refuse To Hire A Person With Dreadlocks, Court Says was originally published on globalgrind.com
