Imane Boudlal files federal suit after supervisors at Disneyland theme park prohibited her from wearing headscarf to work
Former Disney employee Imane Boudlal said she faced harassment as soon as she began working at the theme park. Photograph: Jason Redmond/Reuters
Amanda Holpuch | guardian.co.uk
A Muslim woman filed a federal suit against the Walt Disney Company on Monday on the grounds of religious discrimination and harassment.
Imane Boudlal, a naturalized US citizen born in Morocco, says that while working at Disney’s California theme park she endured harassment from supervisors and colleagues and faced discrimination for wearing a hijab before leaving the company in 2010.
Boudlal asked her supervisors for permission to wear her hijab when she worked at the Storyteller’s Cafe. Her request was denied and she was told that wearing the hijab would “negatively affect patrons’ experiences at the Storytellers Cafe.”
The 28-year-old also claims coworkers and supervisors accosted her with anti-Muslim and anti-Arab slurs, calling her “terrorist”, “camel” and “Kunta Kinte,” in reference to the slave from Alex Haley’s famous book Roots. Boudlal said colleagues also told her Arabs are terrorists, that she spoke a terrorist language and was trained to make bombs.
“Disneyland calls itself the happiest place on earth, but I faced harassment as soon as I started working there,” Boudlal said in a statement. “It only got worse when I decided to wear a hijab. My journey towards wearing it couldn’t have been more American; it began at my naturalization ceremony I realized that I had the freedom to be who I want and freely practice my religion. Neither Disney nor anyone else can take that from me.”
When Boudlal told a manager about the harassment, she said they acknowledged it was a problem but took no action and said it would take time for a change. She filed her first written complaint three months after she started working at the cafe and continued to alert different supervisors to the harassment. Eventually, one told her to stop complaining.
“Walt Disney Parks and Resorts has a history of accommodating religious requests from cast members of all faiths,” the company said in a statement. “We presented Ms Boudlal with multiple options to accommodate her religious beliefs, as well as offered her several roles that would have allowed her to wear her own hijab. Unfortunately, she rejected all of our efforts and has since refused to come to work.”
Boudlal decided to wear her hijab in public a year after she started working at the theme park, but initially avoided wearing it to work because she thought she would be fired. When her request to wear it was denied, she offered to wear a hijab in colors matching her uniform or with a Disney logo. The company responded by telling her she could work in the back of the cafe where she wouldn’t be seen by customers or wear a hat on top of her headscarf.
Disney also designed specialty uniformsfor Boudlal, an effort that worked with a different employee in 2010, who was told she couldn’t wear her hijab while working as a vacation planner at a Disney resort.
Boudlal refused these options and said she was taken off the schedule and discharged. Disney says she was given the options for accommodations and chose not to return to work.
In a complaint Boudlal filed with the ACLU of Southern California in the Central District of California, she asked Disney for punitive damages, a permanent injunction not to prohibit employees wearing hijabs and for company anti-harassment training to include Muslim issues.
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