1. Why does the Court conclude that “actual knowledge” is not necessary?

2. What strategies should employers deploy in order to reduce their liability for violating the religious accommodations requirement in Title VII

3. Just before the decision in this case was announced, Abercrombie changed its policies relating to how employees look and dress. This was a significant change to its business model. To what extent should business owners and managers consider legal doctrines when designing or re-designing their business model? Are there any other areas of law that should be taken into consideration by businesses when designing policies related to their business model?

Abercrombie & Fitch Stores, Inc. (Abercrombie) operates several lines of cloth-ing stores and maintains policies consistent with the image Abercrombie seeks to project. One such policy, known as the Look Policy, governs its employees’ dress. The policy prohibits “caps” as too informal for Abercrombie’s desired image. Samantha Elauf (Elauf) is a practicing Muslim who, consistent with her understanding of her religion’s requirements, wears a headscarf. She applied for a position in an Abercrombie store and using Aber-crombie’s ordinary system for evaluating applicants, the interviewer gave Elauf a rating that qualified her to be hired. However, the interviewer was concerned that Elauf’s headscarf, known as a hijab, would conflict with the store’s Look Policy and consulted Abercrombie’s district manager. The manager concluded that the headscarf would violate the Look Policy, as would all other headwear, religious or otherwise, and Elauf was not hired. The EEOC sued Abercrombie on Elauf’s behalf, claiming that its refusal to hire Elauf violated Title VII. The trial court
granted EEOC summary judgment on the issue of liability and awarded $20,000 in damages. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Tenth Circuit reversed and awarded Abercrombie summary judgment based on its conclusion that ordinarily an employer cannot be liable under Title VII for failing to accommodate a religious practice until the applicant (or employee)
provides the employer with actual knowledge of his need for an accommodation. The EEOC appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court. 

The U.S. Supreme Court reversed the decision of the lower court and ruled in favor of the EEOC. The Court focused on the text of Title VII that gives religion favored status and provided a straightforward rule for disparate-treatment claims based on a failure to accommodate a religious practice: An employer may not make an applicant’s religious practice, con-firmed or otherwise, a factor in employment decisions. The Court rejected Abercrombie’s argument that the employer must have actual knowledge of the employee’s need for religious accommodation because there was no language in the statute that required such knowledge in order to trigger liability. Instead, an applicant need only show that her need for an accommodation was a motivating factor in the employer’s decision.

“Abercrombie urges this Court to adopt the Tenth Circuit’s rule ‘allocat[ing] the burden of raising a religious conflict.’ This would require the employer to have actual knowledge of a conflict between an applicant’s religious practice and a work rule. The problem with this approach is the one that [results] in most incorrect interpretations of statutes: It asks us to add words to the law to produce what is thought to be a desirable result. That is Congress’s province. We construe Title VII’s silence as exactly that: silence.”

“A request for accommodation, or the employer’s certainty that the practice exists, may make it easier to infer motive, but is not a necessary condition of liability. . . .

Nor does the statute limit disparate-treatment claims to only those employer policies that treat religious practices less favorably than similar secular practices. Abercrombie’s argument that a neutral policy cannot constitute ‘intentional discrimination’ may make sense in other contexts. But Title VII does not demand mere neutrality with regard to religious practices . . . Rather, it gives them favored
treatment, affirmatively obligating employers not ‘to fail or refuse to hire or discharge any individual .  .  . because of such individual’s religious observance and practice.’ An employer is surely entitled to have, for example, a no headwear policy as an ordinary matter. But when an applicant requires an accommodation as an ‘aspec[t] of religious . . . practice,’ it is no response that the subsequent failure to hire was due to an otherwise neutral policy. Title VII requires otherwise-neutral policies to give way to the need for an accommodation.”