Opinion ID: 152022
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 4

Heading: The Prison Dress Code

Text: The majority's discussion of the prison dress code is inaccurate to the extent that it indicates that the new dress code adopted by Warden Nardolillo in April of 2005 changed the facility's policy on the wearing of hats, caps, khimars, or any other headcoverings in any substantive way. See Maj. Op. at 267-68. Nardolillo did sign a new dress code on April 21, 2005. However, that new policy made only one minor change to the prison's preexisting general grooming standards, which govern the wearing of headgear by employees within the facility. JA 77. The old dress code had prohibited scarves and hooded jackets or sweatshirts from being worn past the mousetrap, which is an area beyond the front desk. JA 77, 207. The new policy prohibited those items from being worn past the ION SCAN, at the front security desk. JA 77, 207. The prison's previous dress code had been in effect since February 19, 2004. JA 207. Other than the change in location at which scarves and hooded jackets or sweatshirts needed to be removed, both the 2004 dress code and the 2005 dress code contained exactly the same language regarding headgear. Therefore, there was no material in the official prison dress code with regard to hats or headcoverings between 2004, the time at which all three plaintiff Muslim women employees began wearing their khimars to work on a daily basis, and October 24, 2005, when Nardolillo issued a memorandum to employees prohibiting the wearing of hats. The unchanged portion of the prison's official policy on personal grooming prohibits alter[ation], modifi[cation], or embellish[ment] of the standardized uniform provided by GEO. JA 207. It prohibited scarves and hooded jackets or sweatshirts from being worn past a specified security screening location. JA 207. And it provided that [n]o hats or caps will be permitted to be worn in the facility unless issued with a uniform. Moss testified that the hat she wore to work was issued to her as part of her official uniform. JA 156. Under the dress code as written, she should therefore have been allowed to wear the hat within the facility. This directly contradicts Nardolillo's testimony that no hats could be worn within the facility because no hats were issued with uniforms, as the hat was not, per se, an official part of the uniform. JA 78. Nardolillo's claim that a hat was not part of the correctional officer uniform is further contradicted by GEO's own records tracking the uniforms that were issued to its correctional employees. Those records corroborate Moss' testimony that hats were distributed as part of the uniforms. JA 78-80. Nardolillo testified that even if employees were given hats as part of their official uniform, they were not allowed to wear them within the secured perimeter of the facility. JA 83. Again, this is contradicted by Moss' testimony that various headcoverings were commonly worn by employees within the facility. JA 157. It is also contradicted by Nardolillo's own testimony that employees were wearing whatever they wanted to wear on their heads until he took action to end this practice. JA 78. Nardolillo testified that he believed the only appropriate situation in which an employee could wear a head covering was if a guard who worked at the guard shack outside of the secure perimeter of the prison was granted his personal permission to wear a GEO ski cap due to cold winter temperatures. JA 83. However, the plain language of the prison dress code that existed in 2004 and was readopted by Nardolillo in April 2005, allows hats to be worn in the facility if they are issued with the uniform. JA 207. Holm testified that there has only ever been one official hat issued with the uniform and that was to that first group of employees in 1998 and none of them wore it and it's not in existence anymore. JA 185. That statement is directly contradicted by GEO's own records, which indicate that a cap continued to be issued to correctional officers at the prison as part of their uniform through 2005. JA 80. Nardolillo testified that he did not change the policy of distributing caps to employees as part of their uniforms when he readopted the prison dress code in April of 2005. Plaintiffs presented evidence that hats continued to be commonly worn within the secure areas of the prison just as they had been under the identical and identically unenforced 2004 policy until October 24, 2005.