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Dress Code Firing: A woman says she was fired from a J.C. Penney store in New Jersey after refusing to follow a new dress code requiring women to wear skirts. Diane Carter, 38, of Hamilton Township, N.J., said a supervisor fired her Friday on the grounds that she wore pants to work. Carter had worked as a hair stylist in the chain’s Quaker Bridge Mall department store for eight years. Salon employees were told last Monday that they could not wear pants to work anymore. But Carter said she felt more comfortable in pants and wouldn’t wear skirts. Henry J. Rusman, spokesman for the Dallas-based store chain, refused to confirm Carter’s dismissal. “It’s our policy not to disclose the individual situation of an associate,” he said.