Sixth Circuit Considers If Funeral Home Must Allow Staff To Cross-Dress
Business Finance
At least 2.5 pages ,no longer than 5 pages
Double-spaced using 12 pt. font.
You are the HR Director of a group of professional Psychologists who provide grief-counseling services to
people who have recently lost loved ones and who have experienced a wide range of traumas in their
lives and who need grief counseling. The practice is an LLC in Dothan and it is comprised of four (4)
Ph.D. Psychologists and ten (10) staff members. The staff members initially deal with the clients during
the in-take process and then they refer them to the Psychologists who have the most experience dealing
with the types of issues posed by the various clients.
The services provided are very intimate and personal and they require a warm, empathetic relationship
between the clients, the staff, and the Psychologists. All of the Psychologists are members of a religious
denomination which is rather fundamental. That denomination has a firm foundational belief in God.
One of the staff members informs you that she is going to have a breast augmentation because, during
her time off, she dances at a local gentleman’s club and that she believes that she can make more
money if she has the breast augmentation.
You inform the Managing Member of the LLC about this staff member’s decision and he adamantly
objects. He informs you that one of the primary tenants of the faith of all of the Psychologists in the
practice is that a person should cherish the body that God gave them and not make any changes in it.
He schedules a meeting of all of the Psychologists in the practice and they all unanimously feel that the
female staff member is contemplating violating a fundamental tenant of their faith; that she will be a
disruption to clients who come to their practice for solice and counseling; and that she will not present
the professional image that they want to maintain for their practice.
He instructs you to advise the female staff member of this and, if she does not relent and change her
mind about the augmentation, to advise her that she is terminated. You advise him of the Harris Funeral Homes
case out of the Sixth Circuit and he advises you that the facts, the analyses, and the rationale of that decision do not govern this situation, that Dothan is in the Eleventh Circuit, and that the Harris case has not even been decided by the United States Supreme Court.
Do you agree with his perspectives? Why? Provide your analysis and rationale.
