Clerk Fired for Piercings Not Protected by Body Mod Church, Court Holds

the only way I keep getting away with my (fairly minimal) modification is that the owner is a drunk and never bothers to check up on the closing shifts.

Good for her.

in a way i wanna say cool... but a church for body mods? sounds kinda ridiculous to me. i mean i'm all for letting people have piercings, because unless you're whole body is pierced and tattooed up and messed up in all kinds of ways you can still look neat and people might not even notice such visible things as eyebrow and nose piercings... but seriously, to make it a religious issue? please

This is why I'm a card-carrying member of the "Church of Having Your Wang Hang Out of Your Pants" - they've got a much better set of lobbyists.

I'm in the church of "hitting people I don't like for any reason." But they keep throwing me in jail anyway.

Relgious freedom my ass!!

I hear you.

We at the church of "everything belongs to me" keep getting locked up too, just for moving thigs around!

I wonde if she even read that dress code manual before she signed it. I know i had too. So this "church of body mods" is that a actully thing

i've heard of the Church of Body Modification before...

but the issue here isn't her membership to the church, but rather that she was unwilling to compromise and wear a retainer.

Ahh.. thank you Fakir..I feel the same way. There are so many religious organizations with so much more substance to them out there fighting for church status, that the idea of forming a 'Church' simply to get whiny about 'discrimination' (when it appears) is absurd. Talk about putting the cart before the horse.
This girl shouldve read the Employee guidelines before applying for a job. If my job required me to appear a certain way, well, its my responsibility to appear that way if I want to keep my job. Otherwise, get another job. Simple.

So, would they be allowed to discriminate against, say Rastafarians, because of the way they look?

I expect there is a provision for recognized religions like Rastafari, Orthodox Judaism and Sikhs. Body piercings (at least in Western culture) are seen as a style or fad, not under the rules of a religious teaching, and even if the origins were spiritual in nature, it is not a religion persay.This is the fundamental difference. Besides, unlike if she was not allowed to wear dreads (the option being cut them off)nobody is telling her she has to take the piercing out completely- just put a retainer in. A simple compromise.

(And if theres anyone who wants to bitch at me assuming I dont understand the 'spirituality' of body mods, check out my profile and pics. Been there, done that, got the scars to prove it.)

Maybe people should become Rastafarians so they can come to work stoned and claim a religious rite.

No.

Some companies may ask you to put your dreads in a hat or cover them. Of course Rastafarianism is a real religion, not one made up to provoke lawsuits like this.

I'm gonna start a "Church of Anatomical Mascots" and try to wear a gigantic plush vagina costume to work.

I always got the idea that people were calling themselves a "Church" expressly to push this anti-discrimination junk.

Really, churches have doctrines. they have views on origins, on the meaning of life, on end times, etc. What other tenets of belief does this church hold?

I don't see how you can make having piercings constitute as a relgious expression.

bottom line is the courts will side with the big corporation on this one, every time. At the very least, piercings are intimidating to most people, and Businesses have a vested interest in not scaring away their customers.

There's many places that will allow you to have piercings. and Costco even said she could HAVE them, she just needed to put in a plastic retainer or cover it with a band aid, which is I think a fair compromise considering that's a pretty lax rule as far as most businesses go. most places won't even let you have piercings, retainer, band-aid or not.