Barred From Helping Daughter, 5 : Father Sues Store Over Dressing Rule

A Canoga Park man who was prevented from helping his 5-year-old daughter try on clothes in a J. C. Penney dressing room went to court Tuesday, charging the store violated their civil rights.

Mothers, he said, can go into dressing rooms with their small sons.

John Hamilton said in an interview that, on Nov. 22, he was helping his daughter, Leah, try on clothes in the Northridge Penney store when sales personnel told him he must leave the dressing room.

Hamilton said he asked the store’s personnel director, as well as its manager, to explain why. He was told that men who enter girls’ dressing rooms are viewed by the public as “molesters and voyeurs,” said Theresa Traber, Hamilton’s attorney. Hamilton said store personnel told him mothers could help their little boys try on clothes, however.

“It’s basically a suit against sexual stereotyping and the assumption that all parents that take care of primary care functions are always women,” Traber said. She said the store’s action violated the state’s Unruh Civil Rights Act.

Ron Winkler, an attorney for J. C. Penney, said Hamilton rejected a suggestion that he and his daughter use a private dressing room in another part of the store. Winkler said he did not know if the chain has a formal policy on whether fathers and mothers can join their children in dressing rooms. He declined to comment further.

Hamilton said store officials offered only the use of the boys’ dressing room or the aid of a woman employee to dress Leah, “and that was not acceptable to me.”

“I really felt as if I was a wrongdoer somehow by being a single parent, a father, with a little girl,” Hamilton said. “I just felt as if there was not any satisfactory response from them.”