NYC Suing for Posting Modesty Guidelines in Stores
Does a requirement that customers at Satmar-run stores in Brooklyn dress modestly run afoul of human rights law? That is the question at issue in the upcoming trial of seven businesses being sued by New York City’s Commission on Human Rights for having signs in their storefronts stating, “No shorts, no barefoot, no sleeveless, no low cut neckline allowed in this store.”
The businesses are all located along a two-block stretch of Lee Avenue, Williamsburg’s main Hasidic shopping street, which bustles with cars and pedestrian shoppers during the week but on Shabbos becomes silent but for the men wearing prayer shawls hurrying to synagogue along the sidewalks.
“These stores are public accommodations, and they are prohibited from posting any kind of advertisement specifying a preference for one type of customer or another, or expressing discrimination against one type or another,” said Clifford Mulqueen, deputy commissioner and general counsel to the human rights commission.
Public accommodation is a legal term meaning entities like stores, public or private, that are used by the public.
The signs are “pretty specific to women,” Mulqueen said. “It seems pretty clear that it’s geared toward women dressing modestly if they choose to come into the store, and that would be discrimination.”
The virtually identical modesty signs began appearing in Williamsburg store windows in 2011 and 2012, and the human rights commission filed the lawsuits in August 2012. There is a pre-trial meeting at court scheduled on March 12th, Mulqueen said.
The business owners are pushing back, claiming that in fact it is the city’s bias against Satmar Hasidim that is motivating the lawsuits.
“The only bias I see in these lawsuits is a stereotype by the City Commission of Human Rights that ‘all Hasidim must be guilty of discrimination because they’re all misogynists,’ ” said Marc Stern, a civil rights expert who works as counsel to the American Jewish Committee. Stern said he is informally advising the attorney representing the businesses. “It reflects a bias on the part of this commission.”
The stores named in the lawsuits range from Friedman’s Depot, a grocery store, at one end of the stretch, to Tiv-Tov hardware store, Lee Avenue Clothing Center, and Sander’s Bakery, at the other end. Also being sued are Imperial Luggage and Gestetner Printing.
They have moved, as a group, to have the lawsuits dismissed, said Devora Allon, the lawyer representing the businesses. She is an associate in the New York office of the law firm Kirkland & Ellis.
“The complaints do not allege discriminatory intent, and that is what the human rights law outlaws,” she told Haaretz. “The signs do not actually discriminate between men and women, and apply equally to men and women,” Allon said. “No service was ever denied on the basis of how somebody was dressed.”
Kirkland is representing the Williamsburg owners on a pro bono basis because, Allon said, the outcome of the cases “has implications for religious rights, and for religious freedoms.”
Stern said that the complaints “were self-generated by the commission.”
“It’s not even clear these store owners ever enforced the signs,” said Stern. “Where’s the evidence?”
But Mulqueen of the commission said that people in Williamsburg “complained to us about having to observe these standards.”
Businesses are allowed to set dress codes, said Stern, citing as examples private clubs in Manhattan, where “if you walked in in shorts and a halter top, you’d be tackled by the old doorman.” He also said that employment discrimination courts have determined that each gender can have a different dress code, such as requiring skirts for women and suit and tie for men. “They’ve even upheld the Hooters dress code,” which requires female servers to wear skimpy orange hotpants and cleavage-baring tops, he said.
“How is it, within three miles of the city commission’s office, there are God knows how many restaurants with different gender-based dress codes, and the city commission doesn’t pursue them?” said Stern. “If those don’t get challenged why does this?”
Insane
Modell’s in Valley Stream has a sign telling shoppers how to dress I’ve seen it.) Some restaurants mandate a proper shirt & no flip-flops or shorts. Satmar should sue THEM.
what a nerve
let the city go fight more important things
do they have nothing better to do with our tax dollars?????
awesome
It is a human rights problem and Im happy satmar will face American Justice for their discrimination. Thank the Aibeshter
Milhouse
What are you talking about? The only human right involved here is the right of a property owner to set a standard on his own property. If you don’t want to comply with his standards, get the hell off his property. You do not have the right to force someone to do business with you.
Andrea Schonberger
I have seen restaurants with signs like that and I guess it’s for sanitary reasons but not businesses that sell products only. The Hooters example is funny as awhile back ago a man sued them for discrimination–he claimed that the company refused to hire him on the basis of his sex. If he had been hired would he have the regulation uniform?
declasse' intellectual
Only in Ne3w York do we have such insanity. Once gain Bloomberg’s nanny government has struck with out any logical reason. All over the country and in food stores and eateries are there signsregarding what is proper dress. I have traveled in various parts of the country, and they have these types of signs all over.
As I wrote above this is the jouys of a nanny Bloomber society.
DaasTorah
If you want to live in America then you’re going to have to accept the people who live in America. If you don’t like it them move to a country where you’re allowed to dictate what people wear.
Hepech haDaas
You have every right to do as you please in your private premises, and you can keep anyone out based on behavior (as opposed to race or creed). That is what America is founded on, not government intruding on your right to run your business as you see fit (even if you risk losing business by doing so).
Then again, America is no longer America.
Anonymous
Your idiocy has very little to do with daas, and even less to do with Torah, And it has nothing at all to do with the combination of the two.
Milhouse
All kinds of wild animals live in America; why should I accept them just because I live here? It’s no more their country than mine; let *them* move. Or let them stay and I won’t accept them. Either way, if they want to come into my property and have me deal with them they must obey my rules, or leave.
“Public accommodation” laws are a violation of human rights. But in this case they don’t even apply.
Different
Why does court make you take off your hat?
Many Manhattan resteraunts make you wear long pants.
NUMBER 3
you must be one of the crown heights “bare all” people to make a comment like that! The fact is if I have a store, it is MY store! therefore I have a right to allow whoever I want into my shop and HOWEVER I like. This stupid and anti semitic city has no right to say or do anything about it! Satmar is not my style but let’s be fair. The city is totally out of line. If you didn’t somehow fit into that ‘forbidden’ category you probably would sing a different song. call a spade a spade.
Anon
“why should I accept them just because I live here? It’s no more their country than mine; let *them* move. Or let them stay and I won’t accept them”
“therefore I have a right to allow whoever I want into my shop and HOWEVER I like.”
If you’re going to say these things, then you have no right to yell “anti-Semitism” when the drek affects you, too.
Anon2
“If you’re going to say these things, then you have no right to yell “anti-Semitism” when the drek affects you, too.”
I was going to mention this. Thanks for saying it.
Abraham I
There are similar signs here in Texas in every prison. When you want to go visit the prisoners there is a dress code.
“No shorts” applies to women and men. They should just expand the regulations and on the bottom say “this is for both women and men”
Grammy's
Can we sue the Grammy’s for their dress code? Can we sue NYC because you cannot walk around naked? why can they limit the public? Where do you draw the line……
peretz
glad to see them collectively fighting back! we hope you win.
It’ll be nice to see similar signs in CH stores, especially during the hot summer months.
What would happen
if a woman walked through as Muslim neighborhood in NYC wearing a sleeveless dress
Meir
At Best The Muslims would warn her not to dare walk through their neighborhood again if she wasn’t dressed tzniusdik
Mendy Hecht
it’s a pleasure to see the AJC, a flag bearer of the secular Jewish establishment, actually come to the aid and defense of Jews towards.whom the Jewish establishment generally holds its nose.
As for the “charges,” I couldn’t agree with Mr. Stern more. It’s nothing more than passive-aggressive and childish hate of religious people poorly disguised as “human rights concerns.”
I mean, what happened to “no shirt, no shoes, no service?” Is that now illegal too?
The persecution of religious Jews, bris and all, continues. We live in dangerous times, people, and if we don’t push back, they’ll keep pushing us back.
ben Torah
It comes as no surprise how much overt abuse of the Jewish community has taken place since Obama took office.
(The raiding of Rubashkin’s business in October of 2008 a preparation and initiation of this approach.)
Bloomberg has been in office since being elected in 2001, yet the abuse has only recently reached such blatant heights.
To the commenter who mentioned that other customer dress codes are for health concerns:
No shirt, shoes in a corner store is not.
Jacket required (note: only for males) in some upscale restaurants is not.
It is my guess that were the signs presentable, with upscale wording and design, there would not have been such an outlash.
Those people are trying to show they are better than us by attempting to find things that they can use to make themselves look better in comparison to us, yet were the sign crafty (as mentioned above) their inferiority would have kept it’s place, instead of masquerading as superiority. So is the truth regarding the American and liberal worship of image, like the greeks, if you can make it look nice, you can get away with anything.
And with this in mind, so many of our brothers and sisters are falling prey to their buying into the image marketing of American culture, and therefore losing their faith due to image concerns with Judaism and the Jewish community in general.
This is also demonstrated when one see’s Shluchos who even the one weekend when they come to celebrate their subduing themselves to the Rebbe’s mission, disregard modesty in favor of “American marketed” image.
In the same vain, women and girls are so absorbed with the outermost surface of their image (clothing) that totally frum ones start their spiral downward with losing their modesty, which in effect destroys their inner modesty in all manners healthy and spiritual and embarrasses their less conventionally attractive fellow sisters.
In the same vain, wealthy men (and women) publicly flaunt their wealth in an extremely conspicuous manner (extravagant vehicles, clothing, hair coverings etc), in affect embarrassing all their less endowed fellow brothers and sisters, and therefore immodest as well.
The character of a chosid is to hide as much as possible the advantages he or she has in whatever areas.
The character of a beinuni is to avoid bringing focus to his or her advantages.
The character of the Rosho is to extravagantly flaunt any and every advantage he or she has, even if it causes loss to them self and/or their loved ones.
…nevermind the thought that for every extravagance, a fellow brother or sister without enough food, clothing or lodging could be provided for. This is our responsibility, and every time one sees a person unnecessarily and improperly flaunting their wealth (or the image of having it) every onlooker can perceive this disregard of their fellow, and how they prefer use of what can go to help others, instead to widen the social and economic gap between them and their fellow, in cruel worship of their lowly and apparently material selves.
Vdal