Fashion retailer Abercrombie & Fitch will have to pay US $ 25,000 to a Muslim woman Samantha Elauf who was denied a job because she wore a headscarf during the job interview. Further to this, the brand will have to pay US $18,983 in court costs, to Elauf. The company had argued that it couldn’t have known that it needed to make an exemption to its employee’s dress code because Elauf didn’t identify herself as a Muslim.
Elauf in 2008 was denied a sales associate position at the company’s store in Oklahoma on the grounds that the scarf violated the company’s look policy. She filed a complaint with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) which then filed a suit against the clothing chain. Last month, the Supreme Court ruled 8-1 that Abercrombie & Fitch failed to accommodate Samantha Elauf’s religious needs when they declined to hire her in 2008 for a position at an Abercrombie Kids store in Tulsa, Oklahoma.
