Abercrombie & Fitch wants its employees to look a certain way. Company employees decided not to hire Samantha Elauf, a well qualified 17-year-old Muslim girl, because they felt the black head scarf she wore to her job interview did not fit their “look” policy.

Yesterday, in Equal Employment Opportunity Commission v. Abercrombie & Fitch, the Supreme Court held that Elauf could go forward with a lawsuit against Abercrombie for religious discrimination in violation of federal civil rights law (Title VII of the 1964 Civil Rights Act).

The specific issue before the Court was the appropriate standard for an intentional religious discrimination claim in this kind of situation, i.e., when an employer refuses to hire a job applicant because that applicant may require a religious accommodation. To have a claim of religious discrimination, did the rejected job applicant have to ask for a religious accommodation, or did the employer have a duty to ask the applicant whether the employer’s workplace rules conflict with the applicant’s religion?

The central question, Justice Scalia in his opinion for the Court, was whether Elauf was denied the job “because of” her religious practice. Abercrombie argued that since Elauf never specifically asked for a religious accommodation, the store did not have “actual knowledge” of her need and thus could not have rejected her “because of” her need for a religious accommodation with regard to the store’s “look” policy. Justice Scalia rejected this argument, explaining that the federal antidiscrimination law did not require such a high standard. “[A]n applicant need only show that his need for an accommodation was a motivating factor”—not the sole factor— “in the employer’s decision.” Furthermore, “the intentional discrimination provision” of Title VII “prohibits certain motives, regardless of the state of the actor’s knowledge.” “Title VII does not demand mere neutrality with regard to religious practices—that they be treated no worse than other practices,” Justice Scalia noted. “Rather, it gives them favored treatment, affirmatively obligating employers not ‘to fail or refuse to hire or discharge any individual . . . because of such individual’s’ ‘religious observance and practice.’”

This decision marks the second major religious freedom victory of the term. In January the Court decided in favor of an Arkansas prison inmate who challenged the prison’s no-beard policy as a violation of his religious liberty. (Both cases were decided based on federal law rather than the First Amendment.)