This isn't discrimination???

[kengr]

Court rules that women can be fired for not wearing makeup

And the court ruling (warning PDF file!)

Comments

[mz-serendipity.livejournal.com]

I am sure it will probably be over turned eventually by some PC court but frankly I kinda agree with it. I mean its vegas after all, the whole town wears a costume and has a certian image. It's also why we will never see a fat hooters girl. Like it or not companies have a right to portray a certain image and require a certain standard in their employees ( as long as it doesn't violete race or handicap laws. What bothers me is they offered her a chance of another job in a less girly costume area. She chose not to take it. If she had been terminated with out that I would have said more power to her. Although I guess they could have grandfathered her in since she had been there so long. Or hell all she had to do was get a doctor to say she was allergic to make-up. They couldn't fire her then. I get the sense she just saw a big pay day at the end of the "I'll sue you"
rainbow.

[freetrav.livejournal.com]

We don't know enough about those other jobs that she could have applied for. We don't know whether acceptance in any of those jobs was guaranteed. We don't know whether she was qualified for any of them. We don't know whether they paid as much as the job she had been working in for twenty years. There are a whole bunch of reasons why that alternative might not be appropriate; Harrah's and the employee are the only ones that can answer that. The issue here seems to be one of a change in standards that (a) seemed to enforce stereotypes that are no longer considered valid, and (b) did in fact (regardless of what the misguided court said) put an undue burden on the female employees.

It's quite frankly more expensive for a woman to meet those image standards than it is for a man; I've seen that women's clothing - even where it appears identical to a men's garment - is more expensive; women pay more for hair styling; women pay more for scents; and women pay through the nose for cosmetics - an expense that simply doesn't apply to most men. The fact that Harrah's had sharp standards for both men and women doesn't mean that they weren't placing an unfair burden on the women - they were, and the court has decided that they can.

As far as your comment about Hooters, I seem to recall that a *man* took them to court, and won.

[mz-serendipity.livejournal.com]

Actually Hooters did not lose the case. They settled to make it go away. The settlement allows Hooters to continue luring customers with an exclusively female staff of Hooters Girls.
The only change Hooters had to make was to create a few additional support jobs, such as bartenders and hosts, that must be filled without regard to gender. So in essense they won.
It was ruled tha under the bona-fide occupational qualification (BFOQ) exception, restaurants that market themselves as entertainment are allowed to discriminate on the basis of age, race, sex and other protected classifications. Similarly, film directors and amusement park operators are allowed to cast for certain types of people.