http://www.toledofreepress.com/?id=6367:popcorn::woohoo:
An employee at PacSun, a women and men's fashions accessories retailer at Westfield Franklin Park Mall, asked a woman who was breast-feeding her child to leave the store, according to the woman.
Melanie Flores, along with her grandmother, 3-year-old daughter and 12-month-old son, was shopping at the mall on Sept. 11, she wrote in an e-mail to Toledo Free Press. Her son “was getting upset due to hunger,” and she spoon-fed him, hoping to satisfy him. She then entered PacSun to try on shoes, but he continued to fuss, so she breast-fed him, which is the baby's “regular routine.”
In a subsequent e-mail, she declined an interview on the advice of her attorney.
Flores explained in the original e-mail that she has celiac disease, a chronic digestive disorder that occurs in individuals who are genetically predisposed at all age groups after infancy, and chooses to breast-feed in part because of studies suggesting it will help her son develop immunity. Sitting on a bench in the back of the store, she wrote, she felt the location to be more discrete than in the main mall area where shoppers were passing by.
“The clerk, Amy, let me feed him, but when I was finished and looked to her for assistance she was very forward and confrontational with me and told me I could not breast-feed in that store and if I wanted to do it again I needed to leave,” her e-mail read.
Later, the e-mail states, “She then told me ‘We are a privately owned family store, we don't need to follow that law and you can't just go around throwing your breasts out where ever you'd like.'”
The PacSun store manager, whom Flores identified only as Brian, could not be reached for comment on Sept. 12 and 13, and Tim Borland, director of store operations at the corporate office in Anaheim, Calif., declined comment.
After the incident, Flores contacted Susan Manore, an international board certified lactation consultant, who said she provided Flores with information regarding her rights under Ohio law.
“Melanie wa s concerned as far as what her legal rights were, what, if any, skin was exposed or anything along those lines, which she didn't feel had happened,” Manore said in a phone interview. “But I told her that, still, that was not considered a lewd act under this law, that she was still acting within her legal rights to breast-feed in public.”
Ohio Revised Code Section 3781.55, states, “A mother is entitled to breast-feed her baby in any location of a place of public accommodation wherein the mother otherwise is permitted.”
Section 4112.02 (G) defines unlawful discriminatory practice “… to deny any person … the full enjoyment of the accommodations, advantages, facilities, or privileges of the place of public accommodation.”
Under Section 4112.99, “Whoever violates this chapter is subject to a civil action for damages, injunctive relief, or any other appropriate relief.”
The law allowing breast-feeding took effect on Sept. 16 2005, which Manore said she believes “businesses are not as familiar with as you'd hope.” Not a legal expert but familiar with cases involving breast-feeding in public, Manore added that she believes the company likely would familiarize its employees on the issue of breast-feeding in public.
“Typically what happens is they send a letter of apology and educate all their employees throughout all the stores. From what she told me, they had said that was within their legal rights because it was a private store, and I said, ‘No, not when they open it to the public.'
“She has a legal right to breast-feed there. She told me she was also told incorrectly that this law only protects her if she's charged, and that's incorrect information. She does not need to be charged to have this law protect her.”
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