Opinion

Retail and religion

How nice to see common sense — not to mention common decency — triumph in a case about religious liberty.

Umme-Hani Khan is a Muslim teenager in California who applied for a job at an Abercrombie & Fitch outlet in her local mall. During her job interview, she wore a headscarf, as her faith requires her to do in public. She was hired, and for four months wore her headscarf with no incident.

Until, that is, a district manager spotted her and she was sacked. The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission then intervened on her behalf, and a federal judge has now come down on Khan’s side against the clothing chain, which maintained her headscarf violated its “Look Policy.”

In a 27-page ruling, US District Court Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers found Abercrombie & Fitch had produced zero evidence showing Khan’s headscarf had done the store any harm — and thus failed to accommodate her religious beliefs.

Our friends at the Becket Fund for Religious Liberty sum it up well. “In a a religiously diverse country,” they say, “people of different faiths will have different needs. Some workers need to wear headscarves, some need Saturdays off, some cannot assist with abortions or capital punishment. The sensible response to most of these differences is to accommodate them — to recognize that our society is filled with wonderful differences, and to find ways to work around those differences without kicking people out of their jobs.”

Kudos to Miss Khan for sticking up for a basic American freedom.