The Supreme Court rules that a woman should not have been denied a job over her head scarf, but a Muslim chaplain says her hijab made her a target of discrimination on an airline flight.
The Supreme Court hasn’t been shy recently about protecting religious freedom. In an 8-1 decision released Monday morning, the justices ruled that Abercrombie and Fitch violated Samantha Elauf’s rights when it denied her a job at a store because Elauf, an observant Muslim, wore a headscarf. But that ringing decision arrived against a backdrop of disturbing incidents that demonstrate the persistent gap between the legal protections afforded to religious minorities in America and the functional discrimination many still face on a daily basis.
Abercrombie contended that its dress policy wasn’t discriminatory, because it applied to all head coverings and not just religious ones, and that Elauf should have requested accommodation. But the Court resoundingly rejected that reasoning in an opinion written by Justice Antonin Scalia. The decision was nearly unanimous: Justice Clarence Thomas concurred in part, but dissented in part as well.
The ruling wasn’t exactly unexpected. In a series of recent opinions—Hobby Lobby, Holt v. Hobbs, and now Abercrombie v. EEOC—the justices have read religious-freedom laws broadly. The idea that Americans can practice any religion they desire freely is deeply ingrained in the national ethos—and, the Court confirms, the law. That’s a marked contrast from religiously repressive societies, but it’s also very different from some secular democracies. Last week,The New York Times reported:
In France, secularism per se is a reason for the laws. (Like Abercrombie, proponents of head-scarf bans tend to note that the rules apply to everyone, a somewhat spurious diversion.)
Meanwhile, a story circulating widely at the same time recounts allegations of religious discrimination made by a Muslim chaplain at Northwestern University.Tahera Ahmad says she was on a United flight from Chicago to Washington, wearing a head scarf, when she requested an unopened can of Coke for “hygienic reasons.” The flight attendant told her she was not permitted to hand out cans because they could be used as weapons. When the same flight attendant handed the man next to her an unopened beer can, Ahmad says she repeated her request. In response, she says, the attendant hastily opened the man’s can.
It’s tough to know exactly how accurate Ahmad’s account is. No other passengers on the flight seem to have come forward. United issued a statement that seemed to confirm that some sort of incident had occurred, but it didn’t offer enough detail to confirm or rebut Ahmad’s account, simply referring to what happened as a “misunderstanding.”
