Privacy, Power, and Humiliation at Work: Re- Examining Appearance Regulation as an Invasion of Privacy

• Author: Catherine L. Fisk
• Position: Professor of Law, Duke University School of Law
• Pages: 1111-1146

Page 1111

Professor of Law, Duke University School of Law. Thanks to Erwin Chemerinsky, Mitu Gulati, and Erica Williamson for conversations that deepened my thinking on this topic. Williamson's research for her own work on this topic made my paper possible; her conversations with me made it fun. Since they all disagree with some of what I say, I owe it to them to remind readers that responsibility for errors and anathemas is my own. Thanks also to the participants in the Louisiana Law Review symposium, "Examining Privacy in the Workplace."

It is only shallow people who do not judge by appearances. The true mystery of the world is the visible, not the invisible.¹For several decades, civil libertarians on the bench, at the bar, and in the academy have argued that privacy¾whether as a constitutional or statutory right or as protected by the common law¾should be understood as two separate concepts: freedom from intrusion and protection for autonomy. As many have observed, they are not unrelated: both are about limiting exertions of government or institutional power for the sake of protecting the boundary between the self and society and, ultimately, the vitality of both. The relationship between privacy and autonomy is quite plain in the workplace. We experience some workplace rules that deny privacy or autonomy as invasions of the self. Perhaps nowhere is the invasion more keenly felt than when an employer demands, under penalty of forfeiting one's livelihood, that one dress or alter one's physical appearance in a way that one finds offensive, degrading, inappropriate, or alien.

Clothes and appearance are constitutive of how we see and feel about ourselves and how we construct ourselves for the rest of the world to see. Most people give careful thought to how they dress as a part of defining who they are. We dress to establish an identity and to fit in with some subculture while rejecting others. (Green hair or brown? Dreads or straighteners? Make-up or none? Brooks Brothers suits or T-shirts and jeans? Miniskirt and stilettos or jeans and Birkenstocks?) Dressing does more than "fit[] the dresser into one of the available, intelligible categories of people," Page 1112 it is "performative in the sense that it does something in the world, rather than just representing an 'interior.'"² That is, people create culture through their actions, including dress. Even those who profess to attend little to their appearance make disregard of appearance part of their definition of self; they see themselves as free of vanity and superficiality, and they participate in the creation of a subculture that rejects obvious attention to appearance.

Dress not only defines us, it affects how we feel on a daily basis. People who like to dress up often say it makes them feel more handsome, dignified, and powerful. People who loathe dressing up say it makes them feel bound up, stilted, and oppressed. Conventions of appearance for women and men, and for racial, ethnic, and religious groups, express and observe political and spiritual commitments that affect people at a deep psychological level. Anyone who thinks that appearance regulation is trivial just is not thinking hard enough.³

In this essay, I argue that the legal framework of autonomy privacy is a necessary supplement to the discrimination analysis that has dominated legal thinking for thirty-five years of challenges to workplace appearance requirements.⁴ Appearance is an important aspect of the way we perform our racial, gender, and other identities; dress codes often discriminate on the basis of race, religion, gender, ethnicity, sexual orientation, age, or disability, and when they do they should be illegal.⁵ Nevertheless, I believe it is important to recognize that some appearance requirements Page 1113 should be legally suspect even when they do not discriminate on the basis of a protected status. On that basis I will argue for a fundamental re-examination of the legal regulation of workplace appearance codes. While the re-examination may be fundamental, the permissibility of many appearance codes would not necessarily change radically: some would be illegal, many would be legal. I argue for a change of emphasis rather than a revolution in outcomes.

A privacy analysis, in contrast to a discrimination analysis, is a legal theory that is available to anyone who is significantly oppressed by an unreasonable workplace dress code. Privacy analysis may thus be more resistant to charges of special treatment and the backlash that such charges can generate.⁶ From the employer's standpoint, privacy analysis allows more flexibility and nuance in distinguishing appearance regulations that are legal from those that are not. It might, for example, preserve the ability of an employer to require some dress conventions, including some that may reflect gender, religious, and other norms, while ruling out others. A law firm might be able to require coats and ties for men but not skirts for women, even though both are explicitly gender- based and neither is a bona fide occupational qualification, because a court might conclude that the autonomy infringement might be greater for the women and the justification for appealing to the preferences of the employer or customers for men to look professional is greater than for women to look sexy. A privacy analysis would help courts distinguish between dress codes that humiliate and those that do not, as well as help a court understand that a dress code can be generally valid but cannot be enforced against a particular employee who might find a particular dress requirement exceptionally humiliating or offensive.

Wholly apart from the effects of a privacy analysis on the outcome of litigation, I think it will also prompt a more thoughtful analysis by firms of whether or how they should attempt to formally regulate employee appearance and how to handle the employee who objects. Employment law should attend not only to how rules would be applied in litigation but also, perhaps even most importantly, to how rules affect voluntary compliance.⁷ A Page 1114 privacy analysis will prompt an employer to consider the strength of its justification for its policy, the degree of humiliation it will inflict on particular workers, and whether the harm is necessary to achieve the benefit. A discrimination analysis, by contrast, invites an employer to adopt even a silly appearance regulation (e.g., women must wear make-up and nail polish) if the employer can convince itself that the regulation is not sex discrimination because it equally burdens men or because only certain women will object. Privacy analysis will thus better identify and accommodate the employer's interest in the appearance of its workforce with the interests of various employees in being free from humiliating workplace requirements.

I Dress Codes, Status, and Power

A few months ago, I received a request for legal advice from an employee of a school that had recently instituted a dress code for all staff. The new rules required male staff to wear khaki slacks and a collared shirt. The man, an electrician who often worked outdoors and in un-air-conditioned spaces, said he could not wear light-colored clothes because he had a physical condition that caused him to perspire profusely. As he explained it, "If I have to wear khaki pants, inside of an hour I'll look like I wet myself. The students will laugh, and I'm just not willing to be humiliated." I suggested that he get medical documentation of his condition and ask his employer to make an exception to allow him to wear dark-colored clothes. The man called me back a week later and said that his employer refused to make an exception. I thought about suggesting litigation except I could not find a legal theory¾his perspiration condition is probably not a disability because excessive perspiring probably does not interfere with a major life activity;⁸ firing him wasn't a breach of contract as he was an at-will employee; it was hard to identify a public policy that was offended by a khaki pants uniform; and the dress code was not adopted or maintained for the purpose of intentionally inflicting emotional distress. The man decided to resign rather than be Page 1115 humiliated by complying with the dress code or by having a confrontation over refusing to comply.

I was at first stunned that the school district would reject what I considered such a minor and reasonable request and would let a long-term employee go because of it. But when I thought about it, I realized that the school officials interpreted his request for an exemption as a major challenge to their authority. And, as I thought about why they thought so much was at stake over khaki as opposed to black chino pants, I realized why this was not trivial to them. If they made an exception for one employee, they must have feared being inundated with requests for exceptions from employees who did not want to buy a new wardrobe. They may have worried that other employees would suspect favoritism as they wondered why he was treated differently. From the employer's perspective, allowing one employee an alternative to the dress code, even a dress code as arbitrary (but as conventional) as one that required khaki-colored pants instead of dark-colored ones, would risk not only the dress code but also the employer's reputation for even-handedness. An employer that announces a mandatory dress code and then cannot enforce it loses control over the workplace in a way that it would perceive as quite serious. It would upset the power structure. Soon, the school officials might have feared...