Efforts to Outlaw Race-Based Hair Discrimination Gain Traction: What Employers Need to Know about the CROWN Act

In 2010, Catastrophe Management Solutions hired Chastity Jones. Jones, a black woman, was fired after she refused to cut her dreadlocks to comply with CMS’s employee grooming standards. The EEOC sued, arguing that Jones’s dismissal amounted to race discrimination. But the courts disagreed, finding Jones’s dreadlocks were not a fixed (i.e., immutable) trait constituting “race” …read more »