Is it racial discrimination to tell a prospective employee who is black that you can’t hire her unless she cuts off her dreadlocks? A panel of three judges from the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 11th Circuit didn’t think so.
In Equal Employment Opportunity v. Catastrophe Management Solutions, circuit court judges said that, since they don’t see dreadlocks as an “immutable trait” of black or African-American employees, employers should be able to ban the hairstyle. The controversial Sept. 15 decision raises almost as many questions as it answers about what employers can and should control when it comes to hairstyles.
