Privacy in the Workplace: Employee Dress or Appearance Policy | Lasher Holzapfel Sperry & Ebberson PLLC

(This blog is the third installment in a multi-part series on privacy in the workplace.)

Employee dress codes and policies can be an important way to ensure that employees properly represent the company’s image and do not offend customers or the general public. Dress codes can also promote safety in the workplace (e.g., no jewelry or closed-toe shoes, etc.). Such policies can also affect workplace culture: a relaxed dress code can promote collaboration and camaraderie, while a business formal rule can promote professionalism and courtesy.

A company dress code can range from describing general appearance policies (“business casual/smart casual;” or “dress neatly and wear clean clothes, free of holes, rips, or other signs of wear”) to spelling out specific clothing that mandatory for employees to wear (uniform or similar clothing, such as black pants and white shirt).

Whatever the policy, however, employers must be careful not to impose policies in a discriminatory manner. Employers may be responsible for appearance policies that potentially discriminate against protected classes (either explicitly or as a different effect). Requiring all employees to shave, have short hair, or not have tattoos/piercing can potentially violate the religious beliefs of bona fide employees. Similarly, a rigid uniform policy can discriminate against someone using a wheelchair, which is disability discrimination.

As a result, if employers choose to have a dress code in place, they should be prepared when employees request an exception to the policy. Generally, the employer is only obliged to accommodate the request if the request is based on the employee’s protective status (age, race, gender, disability, religion, etc.). The employer must accommodate the request as long as it does not cause “undue hardship”.

As a general rule, it is not legal to have a dress code only for one gender, but not for the other. Employers may have different dress codes for women and men, as long as the policy does not place an unfair burden on one gender over the other. Employers should avoid relying on dress code violations as the sole basis for disciplining employees unless they have made a good faith effort to accommodate the employee’s requests and can demonstrate undue burden.

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