Abercrombie & Fitch Stores, Inc. Case Study

Equal Employment Opportunity Commission v. Abercrombie & Fitch Stores, Inc. (EEOC v. A&F Stores) was a court case relating to hiring discrimination against women who wore hijabs that was seen by the Supreme Court in 2015 (“Abercrombie Resolves Religious Discrimination Case Following Supreme Court Ruling in Favor of EEOC”, 2015). The significant ruling for the case helped to define exactly what qualifies as employment discrimination, thus further expanding on Title VII’s examination of anti-discrimination regulations.
EEOC v. A&F Stores specifically dealt with a Muslim woman, who wears hijab, who was not hired at Abercrombie and Fitch Stores because her hijab violated the company’s “look policy” (Karim, 2015). After years of appeals, this case helped define the idea that in a disparate-treatment claim, prospective employees only need to demonstrate that employee accommodation requirements - in this case, a hijab - was a motivating factor in the employer’s decision to not hire them ("Equal Employment Opportunity Commission v. Abercrombie & Fitch Stores, Inc.," n.d.)

The woman who interviewed her was impressed with her personality, and gave her a score that should have resulted in her hiring. There was one snag; however: Abercrombie and Fitch has a “look policy” that prevents employees from wearing headscarves of any nature. The interviewer was hesitant to hire Elauf because of her hijab’s violation of the “look policy”, and after discussing the matter with a manager, decided to give Elauf a low score in the “look” section as she did not state why she wore the hijab in the interview (Roeder, 2015). This eventually resulted in Elauf being denied the job. Due to her hijab, Elauf was given a low score in the ‘look’ section of the job application, and was not hired (Roeder,