[Congressional Record Volume 141, Number 45 (Friday, March 10, 1995)]
[Senate]
[Pages S3780-S3781]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                    A STRAITJACKET FOR LILLIE RUBIN

  Mrs. HUTCHISON. Mr. President, our regulatory reform debate has 
ranged from the sublime to the ridiculous and back. Today I would like 
to weigh in briefly on the side of the ridiculous.
  The dressing room of a fine women's clothing store may seem like an 
odd place for the EEOC to intrude in a way that perfectly illustrates 
regulatory excess, but that is exactly where we find ourselves today. 
The firm in question, Lillie Rubin, is a successful 49-year-old 
business with 60 affiliates, specializing in clothes for women. But the 
EEOC is measuring Lillie Rubin for a new outfit, and I think it seems 
like more of a straitjacket than a woman's dress.
  In opposition to its own regulations and its own previous decisions, 
the EEOC has ruled that a Lillie Rubin store in Phoenix must employ 
male salespeople, and it is demanding that they be allowed to work in 
the store's fitting rooms where female customers try on clothes. I know 
this does not sound like an EEOC case so much as an ``I Love Lucy'' 
rerun, but it is true.
  However much our society has changed, I still believe that certain 
standards prevail, and I believe this dress store's customers should 
not be guinea pigs in a new Government experiment. I am astounded that 
an agency of the Government would seek to strong-arm a private business 
into violating basic standards in such an outrageous way. It is beyond 
my understanding why the EEOC would try to force a business such as 
Lillie Rubin to sacrifice the privacy of its customers in order to 
avoid Government censure.
  But customer privacy is not all that Lillie Rubin would be 
sacrificing if it is forced to comply with this EEOC ruling. What the 
EEOC has concocted is a remedy that could well drive away Lillie 
Rubin's customers and hurt its business.
  This is more than regulatory intrusion. The EEOC decision, if not 
reversed, will leave the company in an exposed financial position.
  As a final blow, EEOC is insisting that Lillie Rubin pay for 
newspaper advertisements to publicize that it may be vulnerable to EEOC 
claims by men who have applied in the past or might in the future.
  The EEOC's approach to Lillie Rubin has been highhanded and arbitrary 
in the extreme, and bizarre, I think, as well. According to the 
company, one EEOC investigator told a company representative that 
``Some women like it'' when there are males in the dressing room when 
they disrobe.
  Mr. President, I ask you, is that what the taxpayers of America want 
their hard-earned dollars to pay for from our Government employees? Is 
that what this Congress wants the people to whom we are delegating our 
authority to implement regulations to do? Of course not. I am sure 
President Clinton would not want an agency of his executive branch to 
be putting forward a policy that forces men into women's dressing 
rooms. Surely he realizes by now that it is impossible for one 
individual, regardless of how powerful, to even think that this would 
happen and to come to grips with the regulatory gridlock that has been 
created here.
  I think this argues even more for a regulatory moratorium. If these 
kinds of things are out there happening in the real world, and if 
regulators are 
[[Page S3781]] going to this extreme, I think it is time to have a 
moratorium that says: Hold it. Time out. Let us bring common sense into 
this process and let us find out how big the problem is.
  I think this Lillie Rubin example is one more in a multitude of 
examples that we have heard talked about on the House floor in the last 
few weeks, and on this floor, talking about trying to put parameters 
and common sense into our regulatory framework. The EEOC's treatment of 
Lillie Rubin is tailor made--if I could use a pun--to show how 
bureaucratic intrusiveness is sapping the productivity of American 
business and how it is costing Americans billions of dollars every 
year.
  I hope we can put common sense into the system. I hope this just 
illustrates how much we need to put common sense into the system. And I 
hope the EEOC will hear this put in context and retreat from such a 
ridiculous requirement of a women's dress store to hire male 
salespeople and allow them into the dressing rooms.
  This is something we must stop. I hope the regulatory moratorium bill 
will be the first step to allow us to say: Enough is enough. This is 
not the way our American taxpayers expect their taxpayer dollars to be 
used.
  Mr. FAIRCLOTH addressed the Chair.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from North Carolina.

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