{"id":5271,"date":"2014-05-29T14:40:54","date_gmt":"2014-05-29T18:40:54","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.lawyer.com\/?p=5271"},"modified":"2020-07-23T11:40:49","modified_gmt":"2020-07-23T15:40:49","slug":"an-unusual-dress-code-violation","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.lawyer.com\/index.php\/an-unusual-dress-code-violation\/","title":{"rendered":"An Unusual Dress Code Violation"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Work appropriate attire?<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

What happens when you wear a Mariachi suit to work? Ask former CNN studio technician\u00a0William Kane who was fired from CNN in June 2013, allegedly as a result of wearing \u201cflamboyant\u201d outfits<\/a>. Mr. Kane \u201cclaims he was discriminated against and fired for being gay and for wearing extravagant clothes that included mariachi outfits, yellow track suits and cowboy hats\u201d (Algar, New York Post, 2014)<\/a>. \u00a0Apparently these vibrant outfits were determined incompatible with the workplace. In return, Mr. Kane\u00a0has officially filed a $65 million Brooklyn federal lawsuit against CNN for the discrimination. Mr. Kane, who worked for CNN as a technical operator from 2002 to 2013, became well-known for his flashy garb – even with some of the more popular news anchors such as Piers Morgan and Christiane Amanpour. One day while wearing a black mariachi suit, he caught the attention of Ms. Amanpour who asked Mr. Kane to a take a photo with her; the photo was posted directly to her Twitter page in October 2012 (Algar, New York Post, 2014).<\/p>\n

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As part of the lawsuit, Mr. Kane claims that his vibrant outfits only became a problem after his supervisor, John Silva, became aware of Kane’s sexual orientation. Silva allegedly suggested to Mr. Kane that he transfer to other departments such as makeup or entertainment because his outfits were \u201ctoo flamboyant for a male in our department\u201d (Marzulli, Daily News, 2014). Comments such as these could help prove Mr. Kane\u2019s discrimination case, but Kane claims his \u201ccolorful clothes were just a pretext to can him after he came out as gay last year\u201d (Algar, New York Post, 2014). On one occasion in 2011, Mr. Silva allegedly offered Mr. Kane \u201ca $100 T.J. Maxx shopping spree \u2018bribe\u2019 if he promised to change out of a track suit\u201d (Algar, New York Post, 2014).<\/p>\n

If Mr. Kane and his attorney, Mr. Rocco Avallone, are able to prove that Kane suffered as a result of discrimination, the company could be facing settlement charges of around $65 million. Kane mentioned Anderson Cooper in the lawsuit, who supposedly \u201cgave (Kane) his personal company email address and asked plaintiff to email him details of the nature of being bullied by his supervisor\u201d (Marzulli, Daily News, 2014). Another factor in the lawsuit is \u201cthat from 2002 to 2008, the technical operations department where he worked had a tradition of wearing colorful shirts on Thursdays\u201d (Marzulli, Daily News, 2014).\u00a0A CNN representative confirmed that Kane \u201coriginally filed a claim over the issue with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission,\u201d that was originally dismissed, but Kane allegedly received a \u201cright to sue\u201d letter (Marzulli, Daily News, 2014). Mr. Kane stated, \u201cI feel like the Rosa Parks of CNN. Maybe someone else won\u2019t have to suffer the way I have\u201d (Marzulli, Daily News, 2014).<\/p>\n

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What happens when you wear a Mariachi suit to work? Ask former CNN studio technician\u00a0William Kane who was fired from CNN in June 2013, allegedly as a result of wearing…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":214,"featured_media":5273,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"","_seopress_titles_title":"","_seopress_titles_desc":"","_seopress_robots_index":"","_s2mail":"yes","footnotes":""},"categories":[548,3],"tags":[2090,2091,2086,62,524,2089,2092,2088,2087],"class_list":["post-5271","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-lawsuits","category-settlements","tag-anderson-cooper","tag-christian-amanpour","tag-cnn","tag-discrimination-2","tag-lawsuit","tag-mariachi-suit","tag-piers-morgan","tag-sexual-orientation","tag-william-kane"],"post_mailing_queue_ids":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.lawyer.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5271","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.lawyer.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.lawyer.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.lawyer.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/214"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.lawyer.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5271"}],"version-history":[{"count":9,"href":"https:\/\/blog.lawyer.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5271\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8939,"href":"https:\/\/blog.lawyer.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5271\/revisions\/8939"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.lawyer.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/5273"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.lawyer.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5271"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.lawyer.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5271"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.lawyer.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5271"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}