Fired and denied prize after winning work costume contest [AL]

I work in a large office setting in Alabama. It's not a call center but has a similar environment. Officially, there isn't a uniform and you can wear whatever as long as it isn't against the dress code, but several of my managers are religious and very "southern judgey" ladies who harass certain people in the office over the way they look, either with inappropriate unwanted compliments or overly judgmental comments.

I'm a very tall guy who works out and I've gotten both sides of it (the latter because I have very long hair and they call me a hippie). I know a lot of female coworkers who've gotten much worse because of VERY conservative clothing, and in the time I've worked here I've seen multiple complaints to the HR about comments made to them which have ended in them being fired in the next week. Being harassed over clothing/body stuff is a big topic among my coworkers and it has made for a terrible office environment. On the glassdoor for our company 75% of the reviews specifically reference this aspect of working here.

A few days prior to the 31st, I found out my work was doing a costume contest. I had a somewhat high effort costume I was reusing from a comic convention, and I decided to wear it again, not really expecting to win. My workplace has over 100 employees and the top prize for winning included $500 in cash and several gift cards.

It is worth noting that the costume is not in any way sexual or inappropriate for work, or more specifically from our dress code. If you are curious, the character I dressed up as was Gonta Gokuhara, and if you google him nothing is inappropriate about his design/against our dress code save for being barefoot, and I broke character for that by wearing sandals. The most inappropriate thing I can think of is that there were fake bug toys in the bug box.

Virtually no one is our office dressed up, which I wasn't expecting but it made sense. It was me, one new girl who wore a kitty ear headband and a set of cheap fairy wings, and several of my female managers, all of whom went all out. Everyone in my office has strong resentment for our managers for reasons mentioned above and I ended up winning the vote because of it. (The headband girl won 2nd).

I was told that I'd be sent my prize via direct deposit yesterday. I did not, and instead got an email explaining that I was being terminated for abuse of the office dress code. When I called my manager for clarification, she said that my costume clearly violated dress code. After I asked what rule it was that I broke she told me that "I knew what it was" and was hung up on.

I'm young and I've honestly never dealt with a level of blatant unprofessionalism in the workplace on this level before and I really don't know what to do. Do I have rights on this? They can't seriously do that right?

submitted by /u/CautiousPublic6 to r/legaladvice
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