Navy Federal Credit Union (“NFCU”) issued an apology Tuesday to a Muslim woman, who had violated NFCU’s policy against hats, hoods, or sunglasses, because she was wearing “religious head gear.” The policy is apparently a new one for NFCU, and a spokesperson indicated that the policy does not prohibit religious head gear. The Muslim woman, Kenza Shelly, was asked to leave her place in line to be served in a back room.1
The new policy was supposedly created to allow clear identification, but the spokesperson for NFCU admitted that Shelly’s scarf left her clearly identifiable. Although not admitting the incident was a mistake, the spokesperson indicated that the policy should have allowed Shelly to be served at the front counter.
Navy Federal Credit Union is chartered and regulated under the authority of the National Credit Union Administration of the US federal government.2 The question warranted by NFCU’s policy, and its apparent exception or reinterpretation of the policy, is whether NFCU employees allowing special exceptions based solely on religious belief would violate the rights of those not granted the exception. For example, what if a man wearing a tin-foil hat that does not impede clear identification attempts to transact with NFCU’s tellers? What is the proper course of action for the tellers? I’m sure we’d all agree that fingers would be nervously hovering above alarm buttons, calls would be made, and the man would be kindly asked to transact elsewhere. It’s “obvious” that the tin-foil hat is not of religious significance, right? Well, at least not mainstream. At least we won’t have suicide bombers trying to exact revenge against our mistreatment of the apparently mentally ill man.
Why establish an exception and a standard (based on fear?) for one sort of psychosis, but not all the rest? I’ve dealt with this issue before, in Intolerable Tolerance — how some governments are on the verge of caving in to pressure from the religious, and how the government should be neutral and blind to religion, not favorable to it. This is yet another example of an organization too afraid to stand up to the religious, and, in doing so, it creates a special religious exception to an otherwise neutral (and often beneficial) rule. In Intolerable Tolerance, I refer to a case in the UK where a Muslim woman was not allowed to be legal counsel in a court because she could not be clearly heard — a necessity for the operation of the court. If a necessary law or policy is upheld against everyone equally without regard to religious preference, it’s probably a good law or policy. If, however, an exception is given to someone, anyone, based on whatever the person claims is the real world view, it’s a bad practice, and subject to discrimination based on interpretation by the arbiter regarding which world views are acceptable. Mr. Tin-Foil hat, regardless of his assurances that the Tin-Foil Hat Society requires as much conviction and faith as being Muslim or Christian, will undoubtedly never receive an apology or a special exception. Regardless of the likeliness of such a situation, establishing a religiously biased policy is immediately and fundamentally discriminatory toward both the non-religious and the non-mainstream religious, and no affiliate of the government should be making such policy.
The counter-argument is that a policy could be established whereby the employees determine on an individual basis whether any head gear potentially interferes with identification. It could very well be the case that the NFCU employee who accosted Kenza Shelly was biased against Muslims, and made a decision to discriminate against the Muslim woman based on personal belief. This is where good policy should intervene and trump opportunities for bias. A universal policy of “no head gear” can be adhered to without bias if there are no special exceptions, and any cries of discrimination will be drowned out by the argument that all are being treated equally.
On the other hand, aren’t these people customers? Despite their beliefs in the supernatural, do they deserve some respect and deference as long as their behavior doesn’t actually interfere with basic security protocol? The Muslim scarf is one example, and my Tin-Foil hat extreme example is unlikely, but potentially intellectually challenging. To argue that there is a very hazy gray area, my final example is a situation where a chemotherapy patient visits a Credit Union. She has lost all of her hair due to the radiation treatment, and, in her mind, to preserve her dignity and pride, she wears a head scarf, something commonly done by others in the same situation. How should the teller react? The teller could make assumptions (it’s not as if the cancer sufferer is wearing that fact on a badge), could ask questions, could default to strict adherence to policy, could ignore policy or make an exception on the fly (with or without the facts), and could even ask a manager for assistance in the decision. What if it were a regular customer, and the teller was well-aware of the circumstances and reason for the head scarf? Exception?
Would asking a cancer patient to remove her head scarf (or be seen in a private room) because it violates policy be as bad, worse, or not as bad as asking a Muslim woman to remove hers? I’m not asking these questions because I know the answers. I’m asking them because I think that when companies and government create policy, and then try to enforce it, they don’t think about these difficult questions. When they do encounter a potentially delicate situation, they react in ways that are often inconsistent with pragmatism and constitutional ideology. In response to cries of religious discrimination, one bank, PNC, gives tellers “special training on what is and isn’t religious headgear” and tells them not to ask those wearing religious headgear to take it off.3 I’d like to know how PNC and others would react to the cancer patient. And why.
