SPRINGFIELD, Mass. (AP) To Costco, the employee's eyebrow ring violated the corporation's dress code. To the worker, it symbolized her religious beliefs.
Last year, Costco Wholesale Corp. fired Kimberly M. Cloutier of West Springfield for refusing to remove her ring. She filed a $2 million suit against the corporation.
Cloutier, 27, claims to belong to the Church of Body Modification, and maintains that her piercing, which include several earrings in each ear and a recently acquired lip ring, are worn as a sign of her faith.
''It's not just an aesthetic thing,'' Cloutier told The Union-News of Springfield. ''It's your body; you're taking control of it.''
Cloutier said she wore her eyebrow ring on the job at Costco for about two years before she was fired for refusing to comply with a dress code issued in spring 2001. The dress code barred facial and tongue jewelry, visible tattoos, sweat pants, ripped jeans and open-toed shoes.
She said she met with Costco managers and told them her eyebrow ring was part of her religion, but was sent home and told she couldn't work with the piercing. A few days later, Cloutier filed a religious discrimination charge with the EEOC, accusing Costco of violating the 1964 Civil Rights Act.
Cloutier then filed suit against Costco in Springfield's U.S. District Court after the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission found in May that Costco probably violated religious discrimination laws when its West Springfield store fired Cloutier in July 2001.
The commission's area director in Boston, Robert L. Sanders, determined that Cloutier's eyebrow ring qualified as a religious practice under federal law, and that Costco refused to accommodate Cloutier.
Costco, meanwhile, argues that it did nothing wrong in requiring Cloutier to take out her eyebrow ring or cover it at work.
''Costco feels very confident that they have not violated the law or discriminated against her (Cloutier) on the basis of religious practices,'' said Lynn A. Kappelman of Seyfarth & Shaw, the Boston law firm representing Costco.
Kappelman said Costco bars facial piercings ''in the same way that we require our employees to be sanitary and clean and neat in our dress.''
Although reluctant to call Costco's objection to facial piercings a hygiene matter, Kappelman said ''hygiene could be an issue if an employee had numerous piercings or open sores.''
The Portland, Ore.-based Church of Body Modification is describes itself as ''an interfaith church whose members practice an assortment of ancient body modification rites, which we believe are essential to our spiritual salvation.''