Question

Case Study 16.1 Ali's Headscarf In August Alamo Rental Car hired Zeinab Ali as a management trainee. While on the job, she wore her uniform and a headscarf that covered all her hair, in accordance with her Islamic religious beliefs. In December Scott Cooper became Ali's new super- visor. Cooper told Ali that she would have to stop wearing the headscarf or be trans- ferred to a position in which she would not be in frequent contact with customers. Ali refused to stop wearing the headscarf, and Cooper transferred her to a back office. Ali was upset. She talked with a friend who is a human resources expert, who told her the following: A section of Title VII makes it an unlawful employment practice for an employer to fail or refuse to hire or to discharge any individual, or otherwise to dis.. criminate against any individual with respect to his compensation, terms, conditions,

Answer 1

1) The surface problem that I noticed in the above mentioned case is the interference with an employee's religious practices and discriminating the employee for belonging to a particular religion or for practicing a religious belief.

The fundamental right is being voilated. The employee is being deprived of the right to practice any religion and right to follow any religious practice

2) The new supervisor cooper Ali, told his employee to stop wearing Hijaab without any genuine or justifiable reason. Copper made religious practice a base to degrade her to a lower position which is against the fundamental right.

The underlying root problem as identified by me is the hatred towards a particular religion. Copper does not want Zeinab to go in front of customers wearing hijaab, so in other words he wants her employee to hide her identity as a Muslim. As his reason to transfer Ali from her job is to prevent his customers encountering A Muslim representative.

Therefore he tries to first warn her, and when she refused he illegitimately transfered her to see lower position.

The job performed by Ali and the head scarf wore by her at does not have any relationship with each her , and her religious practice was not going to hurt anyone.

3) If I was at the place of Scot Copper I would have never transferred any employee to A lower position for belonging to any religion or practicing any religious belief , as I consider it immoral to do so. I would also not try to hide any body's identity just on the belief that A Muslim representative would not be liked by customers. It immoral, inhuman and ingenuine to do.

4) If I was Ali , I would have done the same thing as done by her. I would have also refused to remove my head scarf just to continue at the position.

The first reason is that even if I would have removed the scarf, it meant that I am not standing against the violation of fundamental right and like coward allowing my self respect and dignity to get destroyed.

Secondly it meant that by being suppressed I was validating other people belonging to any religion, to also supress their voices against the religious discrimination at workplace.

Therefore I would have also done the same thing as done by Ali.

5) The outcome would obviously be in favour of Ali and against copper and his discriminatory approach. As no court will allow any employee to be transferred from A high to A lower position just because he ir she belongs to A particular religion or practices religious belief.

Constitution gives us the right to practice any religion and right of expression, so if we Ali wants to war head scarf at workplace by her own will, she cannot be be made subject to discrimination on that reason.

Thank you dear student

Hope I explained well

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