A waitress at Hooters was terminated because she used blonde highlights on her hair.
New York Daily News reports that a Maryland arbitrator gave Farryn Johnson, the former Hooters employee, $250,000. It was determined by the arbitrator that the Hooters restaurant used a “vague and subjective” hair policy that allowed managers to use a worker’s skin complexion to decide what hair color was “right” for them.
Arbitrator Edmund Cooke Jr ruled that African-American servers at a Baltimore Hooters were the only ones subjected to the policy.
“The manager told me black people don’t have blond hair,” Johnson told the Daily News. “I was a little shocked. I thought maybe I had misheard him and asked him to clarify. He repeated the same statement.”
Employed at the Hooters franchise in September 2012, she was rewarded in an April 2 judgment after she filed a complaint with the Maryland Commission on Civil Rights and the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission in 2013.
The restrictions are based on a server not allowed to change their hair color too much from their “natural” color of hair, and the race of the waitress is a major factor in the decision, according to an official policy contained in the “image policy” enforced by the Atlanta-based Hooters of America.
“I was still surprised to be terminated over something that I thought was unfair,” Johnson said. “I was angry and upset to be treated like that.”
Johnson, 26, said Hooters refused to allow her to have blonde highlights, despite her protest that non-black servers had to follow the same restrictions.
During June 2013, Johnson determined that she wanted to get blonde highlights because it was summer. Not once did she think that it would be an issue the day she reported for work on June 30, 2013.
The manager’s reasoning came from the Hooter’s image Policy. The policy dictates that the hair of a Hooters girl has took to look “styled and glamorous,” and cannot seam “bizarre, outrageous, or extreme.” The policy continues, stating that the hair cannot be colored “more than two-shades in variance” from a natural hair color
Cooke determined that the language is vague and allows managers to make indecisive decisions based on viewing photographs of women in the Hooters Image magazine and in Hooters’ marketing materials
Cooke stated Johnson’s boss wrote down his confusion about the standards in the company’s log.
“I thought the rule was hair color that fits your ethnicity,” he wrote. “Not whatever the managers say is ok.”
Cooke determined that many of the Caucasian women that were displayed in the franchise’s marketing material and magazines used hair colors that violated the two-shade standard. Due to this discovery, the arbitrator ruled the action against Johnson as discriminatory.
Hooters was upset with the ruling. The company released a statement that described Cooke’s decision as unfair. An excerpt from the statement reads, “It is difficult to understand why someone acting as an Arbitrator in a dispute would not want to hear and consider all of the key evidence before making a decision.”
Jessica Weber, the attorney who represented Johnson, stated that Hooters has the right to have a set of rules that that determines its workers’ appearance because “attractiveness” is not a protected class like race or sex. Although they have the right, Weber explains that the standards must govern servers of all races, not just African-Americans.
Johnson felt happy that Cooke looked over the evidence presented in the case and determined that Hooters discriminated against her. However, she is disappointed to hear that her former employers did not feel responsible for the action taken against her and did not apologize. She explained that her true objective in the case was to fight for her civil rights.
Via NBC News
