“This is really easy.”

So said Justice Antonin Scalia when he announced last week’s Supreme Court 8-1 ruling in Equal Employment Opportunity Commission v. Abercrombie & Fitch.

The case involved Samantha Elauf, an American Muslim who claimed that Abercrombie & Fitch denied her a job because she wore a headscarf to a job interview.

In siding with Elauf, the justices relied on Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which prohibits religious discrimination in hiring.

Abercrombie had argued that allowing head coverings would violate the “look policy” required of all employees. Moreover, since Elauf didn’t inform the company that she wore a headscarf for religious reasons, she had no grounds for claiming religious discrimination.

A majority of the justices, however, found it easy to reject the clothing company’s argument since there was ample evidence that Abercrombie officials knew Elauf’s headscarf was a religious practice — and their decision not to hire her was motivated by a desire to avoid accommodating that practice.

Under Title VII, the court concluded, “an employer may not make an applicant’s religious practice, confirmed or otherwise, a factor in employment decisions.”

Now that the Supreme Court has ruled that Elauf had a cause of action, the case goes back to the appeals court where it is very likely Elauf will prevail.

The decision in E.E.O.C. v. Abercrombie may help prevent future religious discrimination in hiring — and that’s a good thing. The Court has made it clear that a Muslim cannot be rejected as a job applicant because of his or her dress or grooming. This ruling will help protect the religious expression of other religious groups including Sikhs, Jews and others.

At the very least, the Court’s decision should push employers to re-think dress codes — and add religious exceptions if they have none. Abercrombie itself has already changed its “look policy” to allow more flexibility and, in the years since this lawsuit was filed, the company has made any number of religious accommodations.

But beyond religious garb and grooming, it remains to be seen to what extent the Court’s ruling will encourage business owners to work harder to accommodate other requests for religious accommodation on such issues as religious holidays and Sabbath observance.

Title VII requires religious accommodation only if it doesn’t cause “undue hardship on the conduct of the employee’s business.” Unfortunately, past court decisions have set a low bar for “undue hardship,” allowing companies to refuse accommodation if it causes more than a minimal burden.

In other words, employers may now be more careful about dress codes but still do little to accommodate other religious practices of people they hire citing “undue hardship.”

For more than 15 years, a bipartisan coalition in Congress — supported by many religious groups — has tried without success to strengthen the requirement for religious accommodation by amending Title VII.

Called the the Workplace Religious Freedom Act, the amendment would require employers to accommodate religious practice unless it causes “a significant difficulty or expense on the conduct of the employer’s business” — much tougher than the existing standard.

The Supreme Court’s decision in E.E.O.C. v. Abercrombie sends a needed message to employers warning against religious discrimination in hiring. But given the pattern of discrimination experienced by many religious workers over the years, more needs to be done to expand religious freedom in the workplace.

Samantha Elauf’s case should remind business owners that for many religious Americans, head coverings are not fashion statements, Saturdays are not simply “days off,” and holy days are more than holidays.

Religious obligations are not mere preferences or lifestyle choices — religious obligations are matters of conscience.

In a country committed to protecting liberty of conscience, workers should not have to choose between practicing their religion and keeping their job.

Charles C. Haynes is vice president of the Wasington-based Newseum Institute and executive director of the Religious Freedom Center. [email protected]

When Dennis Hastert was indicted for trying to cover up some $3.5 million in hush money payments to a man he’d allegedly sexually abused decades ago, Washington was shocked. I wasn’t.

I was shocked that Hastert, who’d spent the better part of his life in public service after working as a high school teacher and wrestling coach, could afford to contemplate a $3.5 million payout.

Then I learned that the former Republican House speaker had turned into a lobbyist once he left Congress, and it all became clear. For a big-time lobbyist with low friends in high places, $3.5 million is no big deal. Multi-billion-dollar companies rush to stuff the pockets of former legislators with cash.

And lawmakers who are in Congress welcome their lobbyist former colleagues. That’s not merely because they get campaign funds, but also because they hope that they too will get cushy lobbying jobs when they leave office.

It’s called democracy, folks. Ain’t it wonderful?

Actually, not so much. I can hardly believe that our Founding Fathers wanted their experiment in self-governance to spawn a highest-bidder-take-all bazaar.

This hiring of former members of Congress as bagmen isn’t an exclusively Republican phenomenon. It’s the name of the game.

When Tom Daschle, a liberal Senate majority leader, was defeated in 2004, he immediately set up shop in a high-powered lobbying firm for a reported $2 million salary. Former Republican Majority Leader Bob Dole led the South Dakota Democrat to the firm.

Then there are the Clintons, whom Hillary famously said were “dead broke” when Bill left office. So Bill hit the lecture circuit to put food on the table — sometimes at $500,000 a speech.

Now that she’s running for president again, Hillary Clinton has decided she’ll need $2 billion to convince voters of her worth. And people are lining up to give it to her. Republicans, meanwhile, are courting billionaire patrons.

Jeb Bush, former first brother, hasn’t officially announced his candidacy yet. This trick allows him to collect money from donors without revealing who they are and without any limits on how much they can give.

I realize our government has never been as clean as we’d like to think. In the 19th century, two of our greatest and most powerful senators, Henry Clay and Daniel Webster, were openly on the payrolls of railroads while in office.

Railroads did quite well during their tenure, unsurprisingly.

The good government movement of 100 years ago was a reaction to the raging corruption of the patronage system that characterized our cities at the time. “Bosses” who ran “machines” for fun and profit handed out contracts, jobs, and public office appointments.

It was a rotten system and we’re well rid of it. But I’m not sure that this political auction we’ve got now is much better. Our system is awash in money, all of it aimed at buying power and influence. At least with political patronage people got jobs — and to keep them, they had to get voters to the polls.

Our current system discourages voting. That’s the real point of the negative campaigning that’s come to dominate our elections. It isn’t designed to convince you to vote for anyone but to make you so disgusted with your options that you stay home. Even in presidential elections, nearly half of American voters do.

Republicans are particularly good at this, by the way. They have to be. After you’ve spent two or more years alienating blacks, Latinos, immigrants, gays, teachers, union members, old people, and women, the only shot you’ve got is to discourage them from voting.

That’s why you need all that money. Destroying reputations doesn’t come cheap.

In my next life I’m going to be a lobbyist. I’ve spent my life attacking the reputations of the rich and famous for reasons I felt were just and proper, and I have precious little to show for it. If I’d been doing this for the benefit of corporate clients rather than newspaper readers I could move to Easy Street, where I belong.

OtherWords.org columnist Donald Kaul lives in Ann Arbor, Mich.

Dear Dave,
I have a debt with a collection agency and they have started calling my office. Last week, I made an agreement for monthly payments, along with an initial payment. All of a sudden, they were calling me again this morning at my office.

Can I legally demand that they not call me at my place of employment?
Joelle

Dear Joelle,
Yes, you can. I’m glad you’re keeping in mind that you have a legal and moral obligation to pay your debts. But collectors have rules they must follow, also. They’re governed by law just like everyone else.

If they call you at work again, simply remind them of the terms of the payment agreement already in place and demand that they never call you at your office again. Also, send them a certified letter, return receipt requested, so that you’ll have proof you sent the letter and they received it. In the letter, let them know that according to guidelines set forth in the Federal Fair Debt Collection Practices Act you are formally demanding that they not call you at your office again.

If they call you at your office after you demand that they stop, they’ll be in violation of federal law. And if that happens, let them know that you’ll be talking to a lawyer and you will sue them!
—Dave

Dave Ramsey is America’s trusted voice on money and business. He has authored five New York Times best-selling books. The Dave Ramsey Show is heard by more than 8.5 million listeners each week on more than 550 radio stations. Dave’s latest project, EveryDollar, provides a free online budget tool. Follow Dave on Twitter at @DaveRamsey and on the web at daveramsey.com.

Yesterday, the 9 million plus Chinese seniors sat for the English portion of the national Chinese exam, the gaokao. Today they will finish elective subjects.

My ability to view the testing stops at the security gate, but I have been privileged to receive descriptions of what goes on inside the test facilities from an Australian ex-pat, Ray Beilby. Mr. Beilby has lived in Jiangsu Province, just inland from Shanghai, for many years. He is a retired school Principal who has been able to observe at close quarters the administration of these annual tests. He says he’d been long involved with the administration of public examinations in his home state in Australia – but he found China’s gaokao involves examination administration of an entirely different order. And although my current location stands to his region as Kansas stands to New Jersey, the process across China is fairly uniform.

His descriptions of the inner workings of this massive test are fascinating and he speaks to the establishment and grading of the English papers.

“Those selected to set the papers are theoretically informed of their choice about April 30, although it seems the potential candidates for this task must have a pretty good idea that they will be selected since they seem to arrive at their centre with a fine bank of material suitable for casting into gao kao questions. From May 1 to June 9, they are incommunicado. Examiners from a neighbouring province are said to be sent to a secure but comfortable resort in this district. All wireless communication is blocked for the period – no phones, no computers, not even morse code; the examiners are cut off from the world. Unless they were to smuggle in carrier pigeons, they have no means of relaying their papers’ contents until after the conclusion of all the exams. The resort is walled and no doubt sternly and very efficiently guarded at its one entrance. Those selected will not return to their classrooms until June 10.”

“All Jiangsu papers are transferred to Nanjing where for a week or more a team of maybe 1000 police cadets, under close supervision, sit before scanning machines. Every student response is scanned into computers. It is from these scanned copies of student work that marking will be done. No one has access to the originals. Tinkering is impossible. All marking is done via computer screen. I think it takes about 10 days, until midnight each day I’m told, to complete the whole task since millions of sheets must be scanned.”

“The results are always released on 25 June anywhere between 6 and 8 p.m. At some point, when all is ready, someone throws the China Telecom switch to ‘ON’ and there the results are for students and their family members to absorb with whatever resulting emotion. Meetings are held for school Principals in local education offices about 6 p.m. on that day and it is there that principals themselves are presented with complete results, dissected in every way a computer can treat such results. And there’s nothing secret about how schools performed relative to one another. Everything is out there for all to see.”

There is no FERPA, no educational privacy rights as in the United States. This openness is essential to public trust that the whole procedure is fair.

But the preparations leading up to the gaokao are phenomenal too.

“Exam rooms have been stripped bare. No written materials on walls—only a printed copy of the exam rules. Drawers, cupboards emptied. Anything painted on walls will be covered in paper. The clocks are externally synchronised. The audio control room and TV monitors keep all gaokao timing throughout China coordinated to the second via the test pattern clock of a Beijing CCTV channel. There’s no such thing here as an accidental extra second of exam time.”

“On the evening prior to the first gaokao paper on June 7, after the practice session is finished, a sealing party will go from exam room to exam room affixing seals to doors and windows – any point of possible entry. These will only be broken when the examinees enter the rooms for the various papers. Immediately they exit after the completion of a paper, the seals are reapplied.”

In my last column, I mentioned the clear plastic envelopes that were the only packet they can carry in. Beilby explains: “Pencil numbers and types are strictly defined. What’s in one envelope will be identical to what’s in all. No 2B or red for unfair emphasis!”

“You’ll notice no water bottles. They disappeared some years ago. If you want water, you must ask and it will be brought to you. You never know what might lurk under that cap or on a fake label!”

“Exam papers are packaged for individual rooms. After the exam, student answer sheets and the exam papers are repackaged room by room. If there’s hanky panky, it will be known exactly where this occurred and which supervisors were involved.”

“Each exam room has a photographic plan showing the faces of candidates permitted to enter that room and where they are to sit. This must match their ID and exam entrance card. A central computer allocates students randomly to rooms and places. There are two answer sheets for each exam, A and B. The student’s place card will show the sheet type he or she is to receive. And so it goes ABABABA in one row and BABABAB in the adjacent row. Swivelling eyes are to no purpose.”

Beilby summarizes the austerity of the exams: “If you can cheat on the gaokao in Jiangsu, you should be automatically enrolled at Harvard.” No offense to Harvard—as most teachers know, it is harder to successfully cheat than to just study.

I thank Ray Beilby for these insider details. My teacher colleagues across Kansas are familiar with the timid procedures we use to prevent cheating on state assessments. And we think we have test security? No, the above is test security.