A woman who worked at a Chicken Express restaurant in Saginaw, Texas, says her managed discriminated against her for her religion after he sent her home for wearing hijab, CNN reported.
Stefanae Coleman, 22, says she arrived for work on Monday (Dec 30), wearing a hijab for the first time after recently converting to Islam. Coleman had been working at the location over the last three months and thought her coworkers would be supportive of her religious expression. Hijabs are worn by many Muslim women who consider it a religious obligation and do not remove it around men who are not part of their immediate family.
Coleman says after arrived for work, her manager told her to "take off anything that doesn't involve Chicken Express," something she took to mean her hijab, she told CNN.
The 22-year-old single mother told the outlet that she didn't reply and went to the back where she removed her jacket and purse. A few minutes later, her manager called her into his office and informed her she had to take the hijab off because it wasn't part of the restaurant's work uniform.
"Your job is your job. Your job has nothing to do with religion," the manager told Coleman in an exchange she recorded and posted to Twitter.
"The job requires a specific uniform. [The hijab] is not a part of the uniform; you as a paid employee cannot wear it," the man tells Coleman, citing the restaurant's employee handbook.
The manager says he'd have to speak with two other employees, identified by Coleman as another manager and the area coach, before ultimately making a decision. The manager eventually sent Coleman home.
Rhett Warren, who is a lawyer for the franchise, told CNN that the manager sending the employee home was a "mistake" and that Coleman hadn't faced discrimination because of her headscarf.
"The manager's decision to send Ms. Coleman home for wearing the headscarf was due to a lack of training," Warren said. "The manager was using a strict interpretation of the company policy that does not allow derivations from the standard employee uniform, and he unfortunately did not take religious liberty into consideration."
Warren added that Coleman was paid for the full shift, even though she was sent home early by the manager.
Coleman returned to work at the Chicken Express franchise earlier this week, however, because of an "overall negative hostile atmosphere at work" she decided she couldn't stay and decided to leave, Faizan Syed, the executive director of the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) in Texas, who is representing Coleman in the matter. Syed said Coleman is reconsidering her employment with the restaurant chain.
"I just would have never thought that this would ever happen to me," Coleman told CNN. "I see it all the time on the news, but never once did I even think that I would get sent home because of it."