Abercrombie's Got "The Look"

 

The excerpted article below comes to us from The Inclusion Daily Express.

 

S.K.  

 

Judge Orders Abercrombie & Fitch To Pay For Discriminating Against Teen Customer
(Star-Tribune)
September 10, 2009
ST. PAUL, MINNESOTA– [Excerpt] A judge ordered retail giant Abercrombie & Fitch to pay $115,000 for discriminating against a 14-year-old autistic customer at its Mall of America store.

The civil penalty, the largest of its kind in at least two years, came four years after store employees refused to let the autistic teen join her older sister in a fitting room because of the clothing chain’s anti-shoplifting policy. The store refused to relent even after the sister, and later the girls’ mother, explained that the 14-year-old couldn’t be alone because of her disability.

The confrontation humiliated the girl, who testified that the incident made her feel like a “misfit.”

“She was singled out and required to hear her sister and mother repeatedly ask for accommodations based on her disability, in front of a long line of customers, at a store that markets itself to young people as a purveyor of a particularly desirable ‘look'” administrative law judge Kathleen D. Sheehy declared in her ruling.

Entire article:
Abercrombie & Fitch fined in MOA discrimination case
http://www.startribune.com/local/57832702.html
Related:
Abercrombie and Fitch fined for discrimination against girl with autism (Minnesota Public Radio)
http://tinyurl.com/nwwbvm