A federal district court judge has found retailer Abercrombie & Fitch Stores Inc. liable for religious discrimination for terminating a store clerk for wearing her hijab, the Muslim religious head scarf, in the third such case the retailer has faced.

New Albany, Ohio-based Abercrombie & Fitch, which operates retail stores nationally under names including Abercrombie & Fitch and Hollister Co., maintains a “Look Policy” that prohibits employees from wearing headwear, according to the Sept. 3 decision in U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission and Umme-Hani Khan vs. Abercrombie & Fitch Stores Inc., d/b/a Hollister Co., Hollister Co. California L.L.C. by the U.S. District Court in San Francisco. The EEOC announced the decision Monday.

According to the ruling, Ms. Kahn had been working as a store clerk in an Abercrombie Hollister store in San Mateo, Calif., for about four months when a district manager on Feb. 10, 2010, saw she was not in compliance with the Look Policy because of her hijab. When she refused to stop wearing it, she was terminated.

After Ms. Kahn filed a discrimination charge with the EEOC in March 2010, Abercrombie extended Ms. Kohan an unconditional offer of reinstatement with the accommodation of being allowed to wear her headscarf to work, but she refused the offer. After settlement negotiations failed, the EEOC filed its lawsuit in June 2011.

Abercrombie argued that it could not reasonably accommodate Ms. Kahn without undue hardship because of the impact it would have on its Look Policy, according to the ruling by Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers.

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But “Abercrombie only offers unsubstantiated opinion testimony of its own employees to support its claim of undue hardship,” the ruling states. “Abercrombie failed to proffer any evidence from those four months showing a decline in sales in the Hillsdale Shopping Center store; customer complaints or confusion; or brand damage linked to Kahn's wearing of a hijab,” said the ruling.

The ruling also says, “To the extent that Abercrombie argues more broadly that an accommodation for Kahn would have threatened the core of its business model and the company's overall success, the court is not persuaded … In fact, two Abercrombie sales executives testified that Abercrombie does not specifically examine the effect of the Look Policy on sales,” said the court, in holding the firm liable for failure to accommodate under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and state law.

Commenting on the ruling, EEOC general counsel David Lopez said in a statement, “No one should have to choose between keeping their faith and keeping their job. “The court sent a clear message that it was illegal to fire Ms. Khan solely for wearing her hijab, and U.S. district courts are finding that Abercrombie cannot establish an undue hardship defense to the wearing of hijabs based on its 'Look Policy.' This is a clear victory for civil rights.”

Abercrombie said in a statement, “Abercrombie & Fitch does not discriminate based on religion and we grant religious accommodations when reasonable. It is our policy not to comment on pending litigation.”

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In a similar case, earlier this year, a federal judge in San Jose, Calif. refused to dismiss a religious discrimination lawsuit filed by teenager who was not hired by Abercrombie because she wore a hijab. The case is awaiting resolution of other legal and factual issues, according to the EEOC.

In July 2011, a district court in Tulsa, Okla., ruled that it was religious discrimination for the company not to hire a Muslim applicant for a sales position because of her hijab, according to the EEOC. An appeal in the case is pending in the 10th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Denver.