Because the God-given American right to purchase bacon is more important than the supposed American right to purchase emergency contraception.

Terrorist.

Given the corporation's apparent past flexibility on the issue, not that similar, I'd say.

Obviously, the repercussions of the contraception issue are entirely more important than the Dunkin' Donuts one. Conceptually, though, there are some odd parallels. I guess what I'm wondering is whether the outcome of this case could have any impact on future EC litigation.

Don't all those ads for bacon breakfast sandwiches or Ribwiches or whatever say "at participating franchises"? Maybe ads for Plan B should say the same thing.

Taking the question seriously, pretty different. On reading the story but not knowing anything else about the case, the judge held that if you're going to allow a practice (not selling breakfast sandwiched) for non-religious reasons, you can't prohibit the same practice when it's for religious reasons: if you allow hats in the workplace, you can't ban yarmulkes.

The Plan B thing differs because, AFAIK, no pharmacy allows pharmacists to pick and choose which medications they will dispense for non-religious reasons.

It would be one thing if selling pork were an essential part of operating a Dunkin' Donuts and the guy knew that when he signed on, but that doesn't seem to be the case.

The Plan B thing differs because, AFAIK, no pharmacy allows pharmacists to pick and choose which medications they will dispense for non-religious reasons.

They will now.

Very very different. Muslims aren't *people*.

This isn't hard, folks!

What if 6 were the case? I'd still fall out differently on the two cases. It seems like you have to deal with the super-high stakes of the Plan B situation to get to the crux of the matter.

3: They're obviously different types of issues - nobody gets prescribed a bacon sandwich (a tragedy!) or needs one to preserve their current way of life or make sure they aren't impregnated by a rapist - but I do still have the gut reaction of, "Hey, if you didn't want to sell bacon why'd you open a store that sells bacon?" To be fair, maybe they didn't when he first opened. We hail from Krispy Kreme country, after all.

9: True, but I think in that case there would be at least some superficial similarities. With the actual case, not so much.

To be fair, maybe they didn't when he first opened.

Looks like someone didn't read the article.

12 - Look, I'm sorry! I'm a bad Targhandology player! Why are you all up in my grill?

Henley gets it right; I don't think it was an accident that DD decided to change up in 2002.

"Very very different. Muslims aren't *people*.

This isn't hard, folks!"

First sentence s/b exactly the same. Second sentence is correct.

It's completely different. First, because a bacon sandwich is not a medical device; second, because the state does not regulate and license Dunkin Donuts; third, because he is not refusing to sell bacon only to a specific class of people; and fourth, because Dunkin Donuts is taking a firmer line on the integrity of their product line than fucking pharmacies do. Motherfuckers.

You people just don't understand. You keep acting like preventing pregnancy isnt an abomination to God.

14: That's psychotic.

Next up: Muslim owner of Hooters franchise successfully sues to dress waitresses in burkhas.

The real question is whether this guy's in violation of kashrut.

2 gets it right; How Appealing linked the decision, which I skimmed last night. Had DD enforced a 100% Serve Pork Or Else policy, they would've had a good shot.

So it seems that the same logic would allow pharmacies to fire their Plan B conscientious objectors, as long as they weren't already letting them abstain from contraceptive sales, say.

Huh, I hadn't even thought of that. Yeah, if the court picked up a sense from the evidence that the change was motivated partially by religious animus, even if it wasn't enough to make it into the decision explicitly, that'd probably help sway it.

7: Superficially possible, but it would be hard to make it look anything other than pretextual. What else are pharmacists going to refuse to dispense, and why? It's not an area where it's going to be easy to come up with the sort of indivdual whimsy that a pharmacy would tolerate.

Just read the story, and I retract #18.

Also, the state doesn't grant certain people a monopoly on selling pork products, as they do with people dispensing prescription drugs. Along with the monopoly should come a duty not to discriminate. Sort of a common carrier type thing.

First part of 22 to 14.

24 makes a good point, but I'm not sure what it's referring to. You mean how pharmacies have to be licensed? But food providers need licenses too.

Now, if there were birth control that only prevented pregnancies of Muslim babies-to-be or an abortion technique that only worked on Muslim women, these debates would be totally different.

We need more white Christian babies and we need our pig.

Pharmacists are licensed by the state. It is considered a profession with professional obligations above and beyond simply handing you a bottle of pills.

26: I mean the monopoly thing, yes. Specifically a monopoly on the ability to distribute necessary medicines.

Pharmacists are licensed by the state.

So are restaurants.

no pharmacy allows pharmacists to pick and choose which medications they will dispense for non-religious reasons.

I think this actually gets to the non-parallel nature of the cases. This case is a store owner setting store policy, and coming into (apparent) conflict with franchise/corporate policy. The cases of pharmacists and plan B tend to be about individual pharmacists, usually at chain pharmacies, refusing to dispense drugs that the pharmacy business has already chosen to carry. Pharmacies as businesses can and do choose not to stock certain drugs; Oxycontin is the most obvious one , but I've had friends who had to call around a lot to find places that stocked various obscure prescription products.

Specifically a monopoly on the ability to distribute necessary medicines.

ZOMG YOU NEED TO TAKE ECONOMICS 101

IF THIS PHARMACY SELLS EVERYTHING EXCEPT PLAN B THEN PEOPLE WILL DEMAND THAT ANOTHER PHARMACY OPEN UP AND SELL PLAN B.

PLUS, MONOPOLIES DON'T ACTUALLY EXIST BECAUSE THEY'RE INEFFICIENT.

31's nice, but unfortunately there are independently owned pharmacies who've just decided not to stock b.c. Which is still different from not carrying a goddamn bacon sandwich.

The crucial difference is this: women are 50+% of the voting eligible population,and Muslims are less than (I'm guessing) 1%. Enjoy Gitmo, you bacon-hating bastard.

This thread is being derailed by the imprecise wording of the post. The difference in the practical situations is obvious enough. What I'm asking is: from a *legal* standpoint, if the donut guy can sue DD on grounds of religious discrimination, can a pharmacist sue Rite-Aid or CVS if they let him/her go for refusing to dispense EC?

But food providers need licenses too.

Not comparably, surely. I don't know what's involved, legally, in operating a franchise like a DD, but it's nothing at all like becoming a pharmacist.

I can't remember where I saw this story -- it was quite recent -- of a rape victim complaining of being denied a prescription for emergency contraception at the hospital she'd gone to after being attacked. The doctor treating her wouldn't prescribe it or help her find someone who would. For some reason I started trying to figure out what the appropriate response to that would be, and came down on grabbing the doctor by the lapels and shrieking as loudly as possible until a sufficiently large audience had gathered, at which point one could explain that one had just been raped, "and Dr. Johnson here wants to make me have the rapist's baby. I don't want to have the rapist's baby. I don't think I should have to have the rapist's baby. Please, can't anyone here get me a prescription for emergency contraception?"

God knows if it would work as a means of actually getting the prescription, and I doubt I'd have the chutzpah to carry it off under stress, but at least it would make the asshole in question's life a little more uncomfortable.

I hate to quibble with OG, but she seems to be forgetting that women aren't people.

IRONICALLY POST-MENOPAUSE WOMEN BECOME PEOPLE AGAIN WHEN THEY ARE NO LONGER WOMEN

Yeah. If that's an accurate summary, I'd say Mr. Elkhatib has a pretty good case. If he's been able to hold a franchise for decades without selling bacon, I can't think of a good reason why he shouldn't be allowed to continue .

But bacon and Muslims? Good God, this case will drive A/ce of S/pad/es absolutely apeshit.

13: I'm not convinced there are any good Targhandology players (in terms of keeping up with the game, not quality of output). Rest easy.

"The crucial difference is this: women are 50+% of the voting eligible population,and Muslims are less than (I'm guessing) 1%. Enjoy Gitmo, you bacon-hating bastard."

Yes, but apparently women don't really vote like that.

38:

OG is good. Very good at this game.

31, and my 22, answer 35, I think. The DD case was religious discrimination because DD's policy is "You can refuse to sell breakfast sandwiches for almost any reason you like, we're fine with that. If you refuse to sell them because you're a Muslim, though, not fine." And that's religious discrimination. A policy that "Everyone sells bacon" though, wouldn't be discriminatory.

In the pharmacy context, though, there's no pharmacy whose policy is "You, our employee, can pick and choose which of the medicines we stock to sell for almost any reason you like, and that's fine. If you refuse to sell them because of your Christian beliefs, you're fired." A policy that "Every employee sells all drugs we stock" isn't religious discrimination.

SAY THEORETICALLY A GENETICALLY ENGINEERED PIG-MAN RAN A DUNKIN DONUTS FRANCHISE AND REFUSED TO SELL PIG SANDWICHES. THIS IS NOT REALLY A RELIGIOUS REASON BUT A UNIVERSAL PROHIBITION ON CANNIBALISM OR THE FACILITATION THEREOF. I THINK THAT WOULD SUPERSEDE THE ORDERS OF THE HOME OFFICE.

IANAL, natch, but having skimmed the ruling, it seems defensible and limitable. I can't imagine what DD was thinking, outside of the possibility mentioned in 14; they initally accepted the guy's policy for his franchises, and helped promote it with signage.

The other possibility is that they are trying to push him out bc of any number of reasons: profit, image, desire to sell to different franchisee.

Franchisors are vicious.

46: True. In any case, it's pretty clear that this is about him specifically rather than a general corporate policy.

I wanted to set up an Unfogged in my location. I decided against it because I could comply with the requirement to swim every day and ogle lifeguards.

because I could comply with the requirement to swim every day and ogle lifeguards

I like it when you Freudian slip like that.

I actually like it better that way.

38: True. But are post-menopausal people really going to demand that new pharmacies open which will stock birth control? It seems unlikely.

Can folks whose religious beliefs require them to kick back on Saturdays be forced to work that day? I think so, but I'm not sure. That's the proper parallel with our hypothetical pharmacists, I think.

12: Caught red-handed. I enjoy just talking out my ass a lot more than being informed.

35: The basis of the religious discrimination claim isn't the right as a matter of conscience not to sell pork, but the fact that others were allowed not to sell pork where he was punished for it.

52: If your religious beliefs are that strong I would hope you would work them into your hiring contract.

52: Nope, still isn't.

52 would be the right parallel if people were allowed not to work on Saturdays because of kids, social engagements, whim, etc. but people who wanted to take Saturday off for religious reasons couldn't.

That would make it parallel to the DD case, not the pharmacists.

Oh, I see what you're saying, Teo! I guess I misread pf's 52. Maybe that is the right parallel after all -- if working Saturdays is a job requirement, your religious beliefs don't entitle you to pick and choose what days you want to work just as, if dispensing medicine is a job requirement your religious beliefs don't entitle you to pick and choose what medication you want to dispense.

There's a deeper question of whether we should be entrusting our nation's pastry supply to Muslims at all, but that might be a topic for another post altogether.

But food providers need licenses too

Not the same sort of thing - you don't have to have a professional licence in order to be a cook, nor are restaurants subject to much oversight other than by the Health Department [a joke, usually - the posh Beverly Hills hotel where the Offspring cooks failed an HD inspection, but was given a C "because you're a five star establishment"] and the alcohol licencing board [also a joke - no one shuts down a bar for serving underage Hiltons or Lohans]. Restaurants have permits to operate, but no educational requirements for employees, pharmacies have licenced professionals, without which they cannot operate.

I wonder if DD has any quarrel with vegetarians who decline to serve meat in the morning? [FWIW, I'm convinced that DDs and Starbucks are run by alien forces seeking to lull humans into a sense of security whilst fattening us up, after which they will drug the entire population and use us all for food. You have been warned.]

I'm convinced that DDs and Starbucks are run by alien forces seeking to lull humans into a sense of security whilst fattening us up, after which they will drug the entire population and use us all for food. You have been warned.]

Pretty good Twilight Zone episode "To Serve Man". Space aliens land on earth, solve all problems. Want to bring some humans back to the home planet, reciprocity and all that. last line - "It's a cookbook!"

24 made an important point. Pharmacies as a group do have a monopoly on EC, whereas restaurants don't have a monopoly on pork products.

A more apt analogy would be if one Dunkin' Donuts decided not to sell pork, and because of the Muslim hordes who are willing to stand outside DD and harangue breakfast-sandwich eaters for their meal choices, post the names and addresses of bacon-peddlers online (just so that people can let them know how they feel, you understand) and actually kill sellers of the wrong kind of breakfast (either through helpful suggestion + guns, as above, or by bombing the charnel houses where pork products are sold), all of the restaurants in the area were intimidated into not carrying pork and you had to travel to the next state in order to get your bacon.

62: I have a copy of the To Serve Man cookbook that I bought at an SF convention sometime in the past. The recipe for Texas Chili starts out "take one lean Texan..."

I was resisting the siren call of a grilled peanut butter and bacon sammich*, and then I read this thread, damnit! To the griddle I go. Bastards.

And then there's the new artery-clogger at Wendy's, "The Baconator." Two beef patties, cheese, "six strips of bacon." Not true; six half-strips, but still . . .

"To Serve Man": the late, great Damon Knight! I had the incredible privilege of inducting him into the Science Fiction and Fantasy Hall of Fame several years ago, with his equally-talented widow, Kate Wilhelm, in attendance.

*No bananas; fuck Elvis.

Hey, so this might be the thread to ask the lawyers:

I made this last year, and now Wendy's is coming out with this. Can I sue, or what?

all of the restaurants in the area were intimidated into not carrying pork and you had to travel to the next state in order to get your bacon

. . . . without which you would develop a highly inconvenient and occasionally fatal illness, that would last almost a year, and would certainly leave permanent symptoms and require you, for the next twentyish years, to pay for a live-in nurse who constantly asked questions about not only your state of health but every other thing that came along, required constant reporting of your whereabouts if you were separated, and even after moving out, still had to come back and check in on you for week-long visits twice a year.

Pwned--the other white meat.

Can you sue? Of course you can sue. Just pay in advance. Can you win? I'm sorry, we don't guarantee outcomes.

It's not over for DD yet: the guy still has to get a unanimous jury verdict that DD was acting as it did because of race -- not religion. Depending on the personalities of the various players, this might well be winnable for the defendant.

Question for the other lawyers: in about 10 days, I'm filing a brief in an appeal in the Seventh Circuit to set aside an improvident summary judgment, and I'm going to cite this case. I wouldn't have seen the case but for this thread. Is my time reading Unfogged therefore billable.

70: unquestionably.

Billable at $.10 an hour up to a maximum of $3.50 a week.

70: I don't bill for reading the NY Law Journal. Should I? If you do, why not Unfogged?

36

Threatening to sue for medical malpractice asking for 18 years of child support might be more effective.

70: Reading the comment thread, no. Reading the actual article and decision which were directly relevant to your case, why not?

Now, bounce some of that argument off the rest of us so we can bill for it too!