ShareThisFour years after Abercrombie & Fitch refused to let a teenager help her autistic sister try on clothes at its Mall of America store, Minnesota officials have fined the company $115,264 for discriminating against a disabled person.
The hefty penalty from the Minnesota Department of Human Rights pleased the Maxson family of Apple Valley, Minn., which was forced to push hard for satisfaction after the retailing giant refused to apologize for the incident and even questioned whether the girl was disabled. The fine was levied in June but made public this month.
Michael K. Browne, the department's legal affairs manager, said the size of the penalty is the largest in at least two years. The amount reflects his agency's effort to prevent future discrimination of this kind, as well as the cost of litigation forced by the "pushback" from Abercrombie & Fitch. "We don't want anything that happened in this case to repeat itself," Browne said.
Molly Maxson, then 14, was with her older sister on a back-to-school shopping trip in August 2005 when a store employee told them they couldn't both enter the fitting room because of store policy aimed at preventing shoplifting. The store refused to relent even after the sister, and later the girls' mother, explained that Molly couldn't be alone because of her disability.
The confrontation humiliated the girl, who testified that the incident made her feel like a "misfit."
"She was singled out and required to hear her sister and mother repeatedly ask for accommodations based on her disability, in front of a long line of customers, at a store that markets itself to young people as a purveyor of a particularly desirable 'look,'" administrative law judge Kathleen D. Sheehy declared in her ruling.
When several complaints to the company were ignored, the girl's mother, Beth Maxson, took the case to the state human rights department.
The investigation encountered strong resistance from Abercrombie & Fitch. The retailer, based in New Albany, Ohio, posted $3.5 billion in sales last year and has been the target of several discrimination lawsuits. In 2004, the company agreed to pay $40 million and set up a diversity program to settle a class-action suit charging the company with discrimination in hiring and employment. The suit had accused Abercrombie & Fitch of excluding minorities from its sales floors and adopting a virtually all-white marketing campaign. The company admitted no wrongdoing but agreed to new policies to promote diversity.
In the Maxson case, the company denied that the girl suffered from a disability until the first day of an administrative law hearing in April. She was diagnosed as autistic at age 2.
In her ruling, Sheehy concluded that Abercrombie & Fitch violated the Minnesota Human Rights Act and ordered the company to pay the girl $25,000 and cover the family's attorney fees of $41,069. The company had to pay the state a $25,000 fine and cover other expenses totaling $24,194.
Abercrombie & Fitch also was ordered to post signs in its seven Minnesota stores explaining that disabled individuals should seek out a sales associate if they need an exception to the company's policy allowing only one person in the fitting room at a time. The company also must provide an hour of training for all employees in Minnesota who interact with the public to make sure they understand how to help disabled customers.
A spokesman for Abercrombie & Fitch did not have an immediate response Tuesday afternoon to the state's action.
(Distributed by Scripps Howard News Service, www.scrippsnews.com.)
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