Woman Denied Haircut, Files Human Right Complaint

[Wetcoaster]

You're probably right. I would most likely be demonized for my efforts.

BUT if I were to switch to the Ladies Gym...the benefits to me would be...

1. Can walk instead of driving. Save $ on gas and less pollution to the environment.

2. Frees up the car so my wife can use it if need be.

3. I'm walking which helps cuz I need to get more exercise (as per doctor's orders).

I see no reason why I should be denied joining the Ladies gym.

[Wetcoaster]

I just want to use a treadmill or any other cardio exercise equipment that's close to home. I don't need a shower/bathroom.

Is there any reason for me being denied entry to the Ladies Gym?

[TOMapleLaughs]

Here's a prime example of how these civil rights arguments pan out: Common sense takes a back seat while the lawyers cash in.

Are women's-only gyms guilty of discrimination?

The idea of a women only gym seems innocent enough. After all, many women may feel more comfortable exercising in a gym where there are no men around. In a women only gym, they would be more likely to give and receive open advice on their health condition and their workout plan. With women-centric trainers, females could likely get better advice as well as have options for activities that may not be available in co-ed gyms. There are also religious factors to consider. Some women are simply prohibited to expose too much of their bodies to men.

But are women only gyms guilty of discrimination?

A women only gym means that no men are allowed. Period. No questions asked, right? There have been cases where men have tried to joining a women only gym and sued when they were denied access. There might be some question as to why a man would want to join a women only gym; whether his intentions are to simply be disruptive or because of some ulterior motive. However, there may very well be a good reason for a man to want to join a women only gym. It could be that there are no other facilities in his local area or region. It could be that the particular women only club meets with the man’s health requirements.

Despite the growing popularity of women only clubs, there are a handful of lawsuits that claim these clubs are discriminatory. In 2000, the Alaskan Human Rights Commission–at the behest of a disgruntled man–made an attempt to ban gender only health clubs. However, the result of that backfired when the Alaskan legislature made it legal for gender discrimination in Alaskan health clubs.

More recently, there was a case in 2005 where a civil rights group sued a women only club in Santa Rosa for potentially refusing entry of one man. It turned out that the women only gym had already been told to make changes to accommodate men in 2004, but had failed to do so. This refusal led to the 2005 case being brought up and consequently enforced.

What followed were successful lawsuits against women only gyms in Minnesota, Wisconsin, California and Orange County. Some of these cases were won on the premise that men were not only denied access to work out at the clubs but also because they were also denied employment. In a case against Women’s Workout World in Chicago, not only were men finally allowed to work at the gym, but the ones who were turned down were paid $30,000 in damages. In 1997, a lawsuit against a Massachusetts health club, Healthworks Fitness Center, ruled that the club could not exclude men.

And despite the small number of men opposed to women only health clubs, you would be surprised to find that they have actually gotten some support from NOW (National Organization for Women) who object to any law they feel is permitting discrimination.

Due to the amount of protests from angry women regarding rulings in favor of men, many states have passed legislation to permit single-sex health clubs that benefit both sexes. These states are Alaska, Colorado, Hawaii, Illinois, Tennessee and New Jersey. NOW has objected to each of these rulings.

In another twist of events, in 2008 North Carolina sued Peak fitness for actually going from a women only gym to a co-ed gym! In this case, Peak fitness closed its women only Arboretum gym and notified members that they could use other Peak fitness facilities. Peak fitness would not release the contracts of those women who didn’t want to be forced to go to a co-ed gym. The state of North Carolina argued that Peak should have released those women from their contracts. The final ruling was that Peak fitness could not continue to take money from former Arboretum members without permission.

There are many opinions on the issue of women only gyms. The general feeling from most people is that it is fine to have women only gyms as long as there can be men only gyms as well. After all, it is true that men act differently when around only men, and so it only seems right to have a place where a man can work out comfortably without women present.

But for many women’s rights advocates, women only gyms and men only gyms open up the door for further discrimination against women in other areas. Many activist groups claim this could actually be a step back for women’s rights.

[Heretic]

By chance was your barber on High Street in MacKenzie Towne?

[Wetcoaster]

Here's a prime example of how these civil rights arguments pan out: Common sense takes a back seat while the lawyers cash in.

I have a dream. I have a dream that one day this nation will rise up and live out the true meaning of its creed: "We hold these truths to be self-evident: that all men and women are created equal."

I have a dream that one day on the streets of Toronto a woman can get a bad haircut in a men's barbershop even though there are perfectly suitable unisex barbershops a short walking distance away.

I have a dream that one day even the province of Ontario, a province sweltering with the heat of injustice, sweltering with the heat of oppression, will be transformed into an oasis of bad haircuts given to women by unstylish, men's-only barbers.

I have a dream that my two little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged as being either male or female, as that very determination is discrimitory.

I have a dream today.

I have a dream that one day, over in TO, with its vicious religious intolerance, with a former Prime Minister of Canada devilishly visiting a traditional men's-only barbershop owned by Muslims, with it's blatant sexual discrimination cases, that one day little girls and little boys will all be able to have the same flowbee-style haircuts as the honourable Faith McGregor.

I have a dream today.

I have a dream that one day every mullet be chopped, every 80's-style puff be trimmed, all the makeup taken off, and those neato hairsprayed wavy curls be forced straight, and the glory of class action lawsuits shall be revealed, and all money shall go to the lawyers.

This is my nightmare.

[derr12]

Exactly - thanks for proving my point.

[Langdon Algur]

Many of those organizations fall outside the ambit of provincial human rights legislation as private organizations.  However when a business offers services to the public at large, then the non-discrimination provisions of the Ontario Human Rights Code are engaged as in the BC case that I cited despite the evangelical Christian couple using their personal residence as a bed and breakfast who refused accommodation to a same sex couple based upon their religious convictions... they were found liable for contravening the BC Human Rights Code.

ACLU???  Why would the American Civil Liberties Union be involved in a case in Ontario?

In the vast majority of these cases before human rights tribunals the complainant often is unrepresented.  Much like the Small Claims Court it is designed for persons to represent themselves and there are extensive resources to assist the self-represented.  For example in BC:

http://www.bchrt.bc....s/complaint.htm

Also some claimants in BC make use of the Law Students Advice Clinics operated by the law schools at UVic (The Law Centre) and UBC (Law Students' Legal Advice program - LSLAP) that provide free advice and representation in such cases.

http://www.thelawcentre.ca/

http://lslap.bc.ca/main/?help

Ontario provides more assistance to claimants than BC in the form of the Human Rights Legal Support Centre that helps people who file applications with the Tribunal. Services may include advice, support and sometimes legal representation.

http://www.hrlsc.on.ca/en/Default.aspx

[Bill Sikes]

So a women goes into a Barber shop full of Muslim men to get a hair cut...... What type of haircut was she expecting to get? If she wins she should just get a free haircut from the guy. Then he should just shave it off.

[Wetcoaster]

Isn't freedom of religion also protected in the Charter? The service is available to the women elsewhere, but cutting her hair would violate the mans religious beliefs.

[elvis15]

This thread is just more proof that common sense is not so common.

Some people here are being deliberately literal in supporting her right to be able to request a haircut at a barbershop, which anyone with any sense would suggest means they at least specialize in men's haircuts and the related services. Unless as Deb suggested earlier this was the only place in town to get a haircut (which avlanch clearly showed it wasn't), I would think it was

For her to deliberately pick that spot for a haircut says one of two things: she's not smart enough to make the distinction and doesn't care about her hair since the barber likely won't be proficient in her hairstyle, or she never actually wanted a haircut but was actually looking to prove a point in the interest of women's rights - or at least equal rights to services. Either way that is just another reason for anyone outside of North America to lump Canadians in with Americans, as (right or wrong) Americans are often seen as people ignorant to modern views and sensibility as well as being overly litigious to make money on something frivolous.

Perhaps the owner had wanted to cut hair all his life while continuing to be a devout Muslim so his only choice was to open a barbershop with the idea that people would have enough sense to realize he wouldn't be trained to cut women's hair (or even that he'd have trouble with men who wanted non-traditional men's haircuts).

There is a large difference between discrimination (certainly public transportation would require equal opportunity for passengers since they are the only service offered of that kind and require no extra skills to complete for all people wishing to do so in the case where Rosa Parks was brought up) and this case, although I agree the line is not often so obvious. While the man certainly had the reason of his religion (and religious freedom is protected within reason) it would also be reasonable to assume he wouldn't have the skill necessary to cut women's hair, and reasonable to assume she would have known that prior to entering the barbershop.

________________________

Here's a completely different view of the situation, perhaps she just wanted to get her haircut for cheaper, in which case she should be suing the salons in the area for charging more for women's haircuts. There you go Faith, another lawsuit for you to make you feel better.

It costs a lot to look cheap, and even more to look expensive - if you’re a woman.

Items such as deodorant, disposable razors and haircuts routinely cost more for women than they do for men.

When California banned "gender pricing" in 1994, it found women paid more than $1200 in extra costs and fees each year. But what is banned there is accepted in New Zealand.

Consumer NZ chief executive Sue Chetwin says it is "without doubt" discrimination.

"The price is based on whether you’re a man or a woman. There’s no excuse ... but what can you do?"

At a Wellington drycleaners a man’s business shirt costs $7 to launder, while women pay $13 for a similar garment. Aucklanders are better off, with the service costing men $6.90 and women $9.50.

The businesses spoken to said women’s blouses could not be processed by their machines, and required more hand-pressing - standard industry practice.

Hairdressing salons in Wellington charge women about $20 more for a haircut than men, regardless of style and length, or the time taken.

"These days, men do many of the things women do with their hair, so why is there that discrimination?" Chetwin asked.

One salon charged women from $75 to $107 for a cut and blowdry, and men from $59 to $79. Another charged women from $85 to $130 for a cut and style, but men only $75 to $90, and a third $62 for a woman and $44 for a man.

One hairdresser said an hour was allocated for women’s appointments, but only 30 minutes for men, although that did not meet all their clients’ needs.

"We have ladies who take us only half an hour because they’ve got short hair, so we just charge them for a guy’s cut. But in other cases, if we’ve booked out the full hour, there’s nothing we can do with that extra time, so we charge them $85. It is a bit of an issue."

She had never considered unisex prices for short, medium and long cuts. "It’s not about how much you take off, it takes as much time to do a short cut as a long one."

But some consumers object to prices determined by their gender. Julia Hollingsworth, 22, said she was charged women’s prices even when she asked for her hair to be cut like a boy’s, coughing up $80 for trims to maintain her pixie cut when she was a university student.

"I’d get charged the same as if I had really long hair, but it was being cut to the length of the average man’s."

Men's barber Brendan Blake said women were simply prepared to pay more. "I'm in the wrong trade."

[elvis15]

The Charter applies to government breaches of a person's rights. Commercial and private discrimination are covered by human rights codes

[-DLC-]

Golfing is a little different....haircuts involve physically touching another person and golfing shouldn't.

So the guy's uncomfortable with it? Again, I understand why she's entitled to demanding a haircut, just not sure there wasn't a really simple solution that didn't have to involve so much negative energy or output. I'd walk around the corner to a salon - problem solved. In this world we may be "right", but it isn't always right to go to battle over it. How about a friendlier world that says, "ok, no problem"?? Do people have to make a stink over every little thing? You've not being turned away from an ER with a gaping wound, your split ends need trimming - get over yourself.

Ha, the guy should make amends by inviting her in for a free haircut. The worst possible haircut she could ever imagine. "See?, I told you so".

[TOMapleLaughs]

Here's an interview from best-selling author, lawyer, legal reform activist, founder and chair of Common Good, a “nonprofit, nonpartisan legal reform coalition dedicated to restoring common sense to America,” and contributor to the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal.

Life Without Lawyers: Liberation of America from too much Law.

Since the beginning of the industrial revolution, Howard says, but especially since the 1960s, we’ve created legal structures that have skewed people’s choices and pushed aside common sense. People no longer have freedom in their daily choices. A “legal self-consciousness” has descended upon society like a “heavy lead blanket,” stifling even simple choices that people make in their day to day life. People go through the day thinking about self protection from litigation.

Interestingly, the problem is not in itself caused by too much litigation:

“Not that many people bring frivolous claims. When they do bring frivolous claims, they don’t generally win. But the trouble is that the system of justice allows people to bring those claims, and allows the plaintiffs to maintain them for years. The result is that nobody trusts justice. Because they don’t trust justice, they don’t feel free to do their jobs properly.”

The result, Howard says, of the legal self-consciousness is that health care costs more; kids aren’t allowed to go outside and play even in the midst of an obesity epidemic; teachers can’t maintain control of the classrooms; managers can’t be honest with their workers; and governments can’t toss out bureaucrats who aren’t doing their jobs because of iron-clad tenure and a fear of wrongful dismissal claims.

The legal self-consciousness has profoundly changed public schools in America. Howard explains that over 40% of high school teachers in America say that they spend at least half their time trying to maintain discipline, which means half their time isn’t spent teaching. Teachers have lost control of the classroom, for fear that they’ll be “dragged through a hearing by an angry parent.”

According to a poll conducted by Common Good, 82% of teachers say they practice “defensive teaching” – their decisions are motivated by a desire to avoid legal challenges. The administration is paralyzed as well. This chart demonstrates the nightmare of bureaucratic hoops that an administrator must jump through in order to fire a teacher that everyone agrees is inept.

Health care has also been transformed. Over 90% of doctors say that they order tests that aren’t clinically needed, partly for fear of negligence claims. It’s difficult to quantify these “defensive medicine costs,” but Howard says that they’re probably in the $100 billion dollar range, a figure that has been cited elsewhere. That doesn’t even take into account other inefficiencies. Howard points out that doctors are reluctant to communicate with their patients and suggest treatments for common maladies by email, because in 1 out of 100 cases, it would have been better to see the patient. Ultimately, people don’t get proper care because of fear of the few.

This, Howard says, is one of the overriding problems with American legal structures – they cater to the lowest common denominator, and “as a result, the common good is harmed.” A system that caters to everyone sounds good in theory, but in practice, it becomes over inclusive and can’t work when resources are scarce.

I asked Howard to what extent civil procedure rules play a role in creating these problems, since those can be reformed with relative ease. Howard replied that the problem goes far beyond procedural rules. The roots extend much deeper into our legal philosophy.

For instance, there is a myth that the judiciary ought to be completely neutral, and must avoid making value judgments.

Howard argues that judges must be impartial, but that doesn’t mean they should be neutral; they should be much more assertive in the trial process. That’s because “the notion of letting everybody have their day in court has become letting everybody have their decade in court. It doesn’t matter whether the claim is valid or not.”

Law, he says, is not about avoiding value judgments. It’s about asserting them on behalf of society. When somebody sues for $54 million because they’ve lost a pair of pants, the court should be able to say, immediately, that “at best you’ve got a claim for $200 in small claims court. Case dismissed without prejudice to re-file in small claims.”

The pants case is an example of “process run amok.”

“When process is so neutral that judges sit on their hands and don’t make obvious value judgments that correspond to the reasonable values of the society around them, then justice basically favours whoever is in the wrong.”

A liable defendant can waste a court’s time advancing even the most absurd legal arguments ad infinitum all the way to the Supreme Court. Conversely, an “extortive plaintiff who thinks he can get a million dollars after finding a fly in the water” can pursue the claim for years, clogging up the system to the detriment of worthy plaintiffs that ought to get their just compensation.

Ultimately, Howard says that excessive neutrality fuels distrust in the judicial system, which in turn leads to paralysis and a loss of freedom.

Common Good conducted a survey which asked how many Americans would “trust the system of justice if someone brought a baseless claim against them.” Only 16% said they would trust the system. Freedom is lost because whenever people are dealing with others, they will have an overriding sense of caution – a fear of a claim being brought against them, whether it be legitimate or frivolous.

I also pondered to what extent law schools were to blame for the litigation culture. Howard agreed that law schools were certainly worthy of blame for pumping the system full of lawyers. More lawyers means more litigation. But he said they were also to blame for creating presumptions and frames of reference – “that people should be allowed to sue for anything and that’s the highest form of justice.”

I asked what Philip Howard thought of apology legislation, currently being touted in Ontario as a way to reduce litigation. His feeling was that apology legislation was a step in the right direction, but that the problem is so large that the impact will be minuscule.

The problem in America, he says, is not with doctors feeling like they will be found liable when they make a mistake and say sorry. It’s with doctors feeling like they’re going to be sued even when they’ve done nothing wrong at all.

Finally, I asked whether Howard had any specific solutions to help inject some common sense back into the legal system. His book is full of them, but he was willing to provide a couple of interesting examples.

For one, we no longer know what constitutes a “reasonable risk.” People have no guidance on whether their behaviour is reasonable, or else risky enough that it might draw litigation. Howard proposes risk commissions that could set clear standards for what constitutes reasonable risk. Such commissions could be set up in a wide range of fields, from medicine, to discipline, to environmental protection.

The whole idea of providing social services as a matter of right, he says, also needs to be reconsidered: where resources are scarce, we need to have officials with the authority to deny things in order to balance all interests. The problem with the current approach to social services, he says, is that it “encourages people to bang the table in order to get everything that they can just for themselves heedless of the effect on all others.”

Howard tells me that his organization, Common Good, has broad-based support for numerous proposals. He has built coalitions across the political spectrum for legal structural reform.

The appetite for change, he says, is definitely there.

[Langdon Algur]

The Charter applies to government breaches of a person's rights.  Commercial and private discrimination are covered by human rights codes

[unknown33429]

I already responded to this. "While I agree she was looking for a fight, in the progressive lands of Canada, she should not have been successful at finding one."

Also, why didn't Jews and blacks just build another golf course? Why didn't Rosa Parks just move to another seat on the bus? Change is made by those that look for fights, not docilely going with the flow. Look at Wetcoasters precedent on the first page about the same-sex couple being refused service. There are other bed and breakfast's they could have gone to, correct? Were they just attention whores or people sick of discrimination?

[canucks since 77]

Other than the law and human rights tribunal decisions on this issue?

[Wetcoaster]

Indeed, and you'd mentioned it before about him particularly stating it as "I can't because my religion doesn't allow me to" isn't in his favour as a business offering a service doesn't get to deny service for religious reasons, but common sense should also apply as to whether or not the lawsuit itself has merit or is frivolous. What if the court ruled he couldn't avoid cutting women's hair based on religion but he continued to refuse service for anything other than more traditional men's haircuts?

I've seen bad analogies for both sides, but here's one I find that might apply when considering the point about whether she could have realistically expected to get a hair cut involving modern techniques regardless of the length of her hair:

Someone posted a thread a while back about a 3 year old that was given a ticket for public urination after being seen urinating in his own yard. The officer who saw the child do it had a habit of parking at the end of the family's road (which was in a particularly rural area). The mother of course complained, thinking no one would reasonably expect a 3 year old to understand the need for a public urination law and how useful it is to write a ticket for such an act.

To apply that to the current topic, would a woman going into a barbershop which most often has the connotation of involving men's only services - except in cases where the barbershop is the only available service, or there is limited service, in an area with both men and women - be able to file a lawsuit for refusal of service without it being seen as purposeful and frivolous?

[Wetcoaster]

Good point but it looks like freedom of religion is also protected by the Ontario Human Rights Code. Although it seems to be more structured to someone being denied a service based on their relgion rather then protecting someone from denying a service to someone else based on the service providers relgion. Gay marriage I agree is probably a fair analogy can a priest refuse to marry someone in Ontario based on the priests religious beliefs? Or can a Catholic priest refuse to marry a couple of another religious belief?

[Wetcoaster]

The "law" was made to be broken. Just have to watch our federal govt. for proof. Frivolous suit is frivolous.

[bjh]

A bogus analogy.

If you had asked for an item on the menu and your were refused service based upon on of the prohibited discriminatory grounds then you would have a complaint.