Opinion ID: 152022
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 8

Heading: Plaintiffs Have Raised Disputed Questions of Material Fact of GEO's Asserted Safety Interest

Text: Plaintiffs also have raised a disputed question of fact as to whether safety was even the reason that GEO changed its policy about head coverings. The shifting testimony of Nardolillo and Holm is internally inconsistent. At times, they testified that they when they decided to ban hats, they were motivated by safety concerns. On other occasions, they testified that they just did not like the way it appeared to have employees commonly wearing various non-uniform hats. A jury could infer that GEO's inconsistent and shifting rationale for its change in policy is evidence tending to show pretext. Abramson v. William Paterson Coll. of N.J., 260 F.3d 265, 284 (3d Cir.2001). It would be perfectly reasonable for a jury to find, despite Nardolillo and Holm's testimony, that safety concerns did not actually motivate them to change the hat policy. Such a finding would be supported by the fact that the changes to the dress code in April 2005 did not actually include any changes to the hat policy, and that plaintiffs introduced evidence that hats continued to be commonly worn within the secure perimeter of the facility after the adoption of the new version of the dress code in April 2005. One could assume that if concern about the safety of hats had motivated the adoption of the April 2005 dress code, the new dress code would include revised language on hats, hats would have ceased to be issued with uniforms, hats would have been banned for all employees, and the new policy would have been implemented immediately. A finding that the ban on khimars was not motivated by safety would be further bolstered by the fact that plaintiffs introduced evidence that GEO did not make any attempt to stop employees from wearing hats or khimars in the facility until the very day that Nardolillo became aware of Moss' request for permission to wear her khimar, and by the fact that after the issuance of the October 24, 2005 memorandum, Moss was singled out for reprimand for wearing her khimar the next day, while other correctional officers continued to wear their secular hats without incident. Additionally, kitchen employees who interact with prisoners on a more frequent basis than either Sharpe-Allen or King continue to wear hats within the secure facility. Further, two of the plaintiff-employees do not even work regularly within the secure areas of the prison. The testimony of Nardolillo and Holm about their motivations simply does not match up with the evidence of their actions. Moss testified that Nardolillo told her that he did not want her starting a fad or a fashion statement, that [n]o religion will be honored in the prison, and that religion was simply not important to him. JA 159-160. These contemporaneous statements directly contradict his later-asserted rationales for the change in policy. A reasonable jury could conclude that Nardolillo and Holm, were not actually motivated by any safety concerns about head coverings and, consistent with that mindset, did not take any actions to limit the wearing of hats in April 2005. Rather, when they became aware of Moss' request to wear a khimar in October of 2005, they discriminatorily decided to deny it, and decided they would rather ban all hats than allow khimars to be worn. Even assuming that safety was the motivating factor behind the prohibition on hats within the facility, based on the record before us, plaintiffs have raised a disputed question of fact as to whether accommodating the wearing of khimars actually creates a significant safety risk. It is error for the majority to conclude, relying solely on the speculative testimony of Nardolillo and Holm that the wearing of khimars creates a safety risk, Maj. Op at 274, in the face of all of the evidence in the record to the contrary. GEO is not entitled to judgment simply because its officials have conclusorily recited imagined and hypothetical situations in which khimars could pose potential safety problems. In order to succeeded on a motion for summary judgment, GEO cannot merely recite hypothetical safety concerns. It must adduce evidence that accommodating the wearing of khimars would have caused safety risks. As the Sixth Circuit has observed, the notion that an employer's mere assertion of speculative and hypothetical safety concerns can serve as the basis of an undue hardship is contrary to Title VII's burden of proof on the employer. In Draper v. U.S. Pipe & Foundry Co., 527 F.2d 515, 521 (6th Cir.1975), the employer asserted that allowing an employee to take Saturdays off for religious observances would compromise safety because it would require some employees to work longer than eight hour shifts, which would be dangerous because they worked around sophisticated and potentially dangerous electrical equipment. While recognizing that safety concerns are highly relevant to the employer's refusal to offer an accommodation, the court rejected the employer's unsupported argument that an accommodation would create a safety risk because the employer had not actually proven the fact of the claimed risk. The court found that the record indicated that employees not infrequently are required to work more than eight hours in one day, so allowing such a practice would not be an undue hardship. Id. The safety arguments advanced by GEO suffer from the same logical flaws and insufficient proof as the safety arguments rejected in Draper. GEO argues that all hats and khimars are unsafe, yet offers no explanation for why it (presumably safely) allows kitchen workers to continue to wear headcoverings during daily interactions with prisoners. The number of Muslim women who seek a religious accommodation to wear khimars is likely smaller than number of kitchen staff who wear hats around prisoners daily. Furthermore, the Muslim women employees perform a variety of jobs, serving as correctional officers, nurses, and intake specialists. In this wide range of positions, many have far less prisoner interaction than the kitchen staff. [2] Nardolillo and Holm's testimony about their safety concerns becomes much less convincing when it is considered with the healthy skepticism required on review of summary judgment. For example, Holm testified that he had difficulty identifying which prisoners were involved in a riot in a California prison because they were all wearing hats. But this case is not about whether all prisoners should be issued hats, or whether all correctional officers should be allowed to wear hats. It is only about whether the religious practice of a few Muslim women employees, most of whom do not work as correctional officers, can be reasonably accommodated. The potential risk for obscured identity created by allowing a handful of correctional officers to wear underscarves does not remotely compare with the same risk created by issuing to or permitting the wearing of hats by hundreds of inmates. On summary judgment, we must draw all inferences favorably to plaintiffs, because they are the non-moving parties. The assertion that khimars are a threat to safety in GEO's facilities is a factual one that has been vigorously disputed by plaintiffs, who presented ample evidence, including expert evidence, that khimars pose no threat at all. The correctional facilities in Connecticut, Delaware, Massachusetts, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, New York City, New York State, the District of Columbia, Indiana, Oklahoma, and the Federal Bureau of Prisons allow all staff to wear headgear in their facilities. One can safely assume that these jurisdictions are not sacrificing safety for their employees' freedom of religion or even of style. Plaintiffs' expert noted that there had never been any contraband incidents involving headgear, and that the amount of contraband found by staff did not decrease after the dress code change of April 2005, nor did it decrease subsequent to the October 24, 2005 memorandum. JA 220. He noted that [c]omparing the types of serious contraband items reported prior to the change in the khimar policy on October 24, 2005, with a comparable length of time after it was changed, reveals that the number of contraband items found at the facility actually rose by 91 percent. JA 220. The majority misapplies the summary judgment standard in taking Nardolillo and Holm at their word that khimars pose even a small threat to prison safety. When the facts are interpreted in the light most favorable to plaintiffs, as the law requires on summary judgment, one must conclude that there are genuine disputed issues of material fact as to whether khimars pose a safety threat in the prison context. Furthermore, whether that alleged safety risk can be alleviated by any measure short of banning all khimars worn by Muslim women employees, performing any job function, without working an undue hardship on GEO is an additional disputed question of fact. Moreover, even if the existence of a safety risk had been conceded by plaintiffs, GEO would not be entitled to summary judgment without demonstrating that the safety risk could not be remedied by some other measure short of banning khimars without imposing an undue burden on GEO. The majority does not even proceed to conduct this inquiry. The majority acknowledges that GEO has argued that the costs that it would incur were it to adopt the accommodation requested by the Muslim employees of allowing them to wear khimars would `cause an undue burden with respect to prison resources.' Maj. Op. at 274 (quoting Appellee's Br. at 18). The majority then admits that GEO has not entirely convinced us that adopting the proposed accommodation of allowing female Muslim employees to wear khimars but removing them at each checkpoint would require locking down the prisoners in each such location. Id. at 274. Id. However, there has not yet been an opportunity for a finder of fact to determine whether or not accommodating khimars would cause more than a de minimis hardship. Plaintiffs have raised a material question of fact as to the magnitude of the burden that GEO would bear by accommodating their khimars. Here, a reasonably jury could find that it would not impose an undue hardship on GEO to allow Muslim women employees to wear khimars. In the first instance, it is unclear why GEO would require Muslim women employees to remove their khimars at each checkpoint. It cannot be in order to check them for contraband, as they do not perform the same checks on socks or jacketsthe only items of staff clothing ever to have been found to secrete contraband. And it is a disputed question of fact whether it would even be necessary for identification purposes, given that removal of hats, when they were in common use, was never required for identification purposes at these very same checkpoints. The khimars worn by plaintiffs do not include veils over their faces. GEO does not explain why women in khimars cannot be adequately identified via closed circuit video cameras simply by looking at the camera, thereby ensuring that the camera has an unobstructed view of their faces, before they are allowed to pass. The majority is not persuaded by plaintiff's evidence that their suggested accommodation would not cause undue hardship. It concludes that [t]he khimar-switching proposals, either switching khimars or removing them at checkpoints, are facially implausible and time consuming. Maj. Op. at 276. In so concluding, the majority again engages in improper weighing of the evidence. See Petruzzi's IGA Supermarkets, Inc. v. Darling-Delaware Co., Inc., 998 F.2d 1224, 1230 (3d Cir.1993) (at the summary judgment stage, a court is not to weigh the evidence or make credibility determinations. Instead, these tasks are left for the fact-finder.) (citation omitted). Determining the magnitude of GEO's burden is a task for the finder of fact, not an appellate court. Id. To defeat summary judgment, Plaintiffs do not need to convince the Court that the accommodating khimars would not impose an undue burden on GEO. They need only produce enough evidence to create a disputed question of fact as to the magnitude of the burden that an accommodation would impose. Because Plaintiffs have done so, GEO is not entitled to summary judgment. [3]