Court of Appeals: Employers have right to refuse someone with dreadlocks

A court of appeals has decided that employers have the right to refuse to hire someone whose hair is in dreadlocks.

A lawsuit was filed by the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission against Catastrophe Management Services after it rescinded a job offer to a woman because she wouldn’t cut off her dreads.

Reports say that the Catastrophe Management Services human resources manager told the woman during a hiring meeting that dreadlocks “tend to get messy.”

The EEOC alleged that the company’s conduct constituted discrimination on the basis of the woman’s race in violation of Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, 42 U.S.C. §§ 2000e-2(a)(1) & 2000e-2(m).

The 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that the company in this lawsuit has a “race-neutral grooming policy” and was not discriminatory.