So, because this guy doesn’t trust himself he fired his “attractive” assistant. And, he gets the okay to do so by the courts. Unfuckingbelievable!
Next up, I am firing my secretary because she is taller than me. I am worried that I may feel less of a man in her presence. I wouldn’t want to risk getting depressed, you know.
What, in particular, is wrong the Iowa Supreme Court’s decision? The Iowa legislature can always pass a law giving more protections to employees than Title VII offers.
In my opinion it is wrong because it enables bigots and their ilk to arbitrarily fire employees because they don’t accept the characteristics or behaviours of the latter.
In other words, it sets a precedent to fire gays, women, etc. all under the guise of “If I didn’t terminate them, I would be compelled to do something even worse”.
But, I know you knew that, so I suspect you are looking for a different answer?
ETA: Why are specific laws needed when more fundamental principles of liberty and (non)discrimination apply? That is the point of the Bill of Rights and the Constitution, no?
There have been several threads about this:
But employers can already arbitrarily fire employees. At-will employment is quite common through the U.S. Women are protected from gender discrimination via Title VII. The Bill of Rights and the Constitution generally don’t apply to private actors (the Thirteenth Amendment is an exception).
Typical anti-dentite OP.
Specific laws are needed because there are competing fundamental principles like “I should be able to hire and fire whoever I want, it’s my business after all.” To the employer, that sounds a like like “freedom and liberty.” So, we have laws that protect certain classes of people against discrimination, and otherwise (generally) allow firing for anything else. The court probably didn’t find any statute that prohibited this action, and most people don’t want courts to write laws by making decisions based on what they think is “the right thing to do” in any particular case.
Couldn’t have said it any better myself. I think the employer acted like a jackass in this case, but that doesn’t mean giving the employee a statutory cause of action is a good policy choice.
I supposes I am naive (and I’m not being sarcastic) but I would have hoped that firing someone because they are a member of a class (“attractive women”) is incompatible with the Constitution/BOR.
You’d be surprised by the amount of ink that federal courts have spilled over the words “because of” in the employment context. The number of statutorily protected classes will likely grow over the next few decades, I think.
Morally, I think the excuse of “I must fire this person because they may TEMPT me to do something” is never defensible. In fact, I would say that all firings should be for a justifiable reason, which is why I absolutely are against these types of at-will employment states. If one is to be fired, there should be a good reason for it, and I don’t consider weakness of the employer to be a good reason
In some jobs you can be fired for being too fat or too ugly or too skinny or any other number of reasons. Being too attractive is at least a nice reason.
There is nothing in the Constitution that would protect employees, even for termination based on sex or race. That had to come from Congress, and even then, some argued that Congress doesn’t (or shouldn’t) have that authority. There are a lot of things that are “wrong” that are not unconstitutional or even illegal. It sucks sometimes, but probably better than the alternative.
In my (admittedly biased) opinion, there’s already too much employment litigation. Requiring for-cause terminations runs the risk of crippling the courts.
If the job can reasonably be determined to require some superficial attribute, I’m all for it. Hooters, because of the nature of their restaurant, should get to hire only attractive women. But attractiveness has little to do with dentistry
Do you believe the firing was immoral but justified simply because of your worry that courts would be paralyzed? Or do you believe the firing was moral but a happy side effect is that courts would not have to deal with it? And how does that compare with the fact that, moral or immoral, the courts DID get involved anyways and that the ruling affects little the amount of cases that would be brought to it and is irrelevant?
If you look at some of those other threads that PastTense gives links to, you might find out that there is a lot more to the story than her being fired because he found her attractive. That (as usual with these things) is just the tabloid/internet heavily spun version of the story designed to get people outraged and generate page views. It seems to have worked with you. In fact it is a complex and unfortunate situation. Certainly it is not fair that the woman should be fired, and she does not seem to have done anything wrong, but it is really not true that she was fired merely for being “too attractive”, and it is not clear that the dentist really did anything at all reprehensible either, or that there was any other way out of the situation that would not have been worse, and even more unjust, for all involved. From what I can make out, if there is a bad guy in the story (and that is a big if) it is not the dentist but the dentist’s wife.
As for the judges, they seem to have followed the law.
Yay America! Land of the free, where the interests of businesses always come before the interests of human beings.
It’s not irrelevant at all. If you don’t think expanding the number of causes of action (or expanding the scope of current causes of action) would result in more litigation, you ought to read this book:
As another poster pointed out, freedom cuts both ways. In this case, the employer WAS a human being, and not a big bad corporation.
There’s a lot to go through in those links, and I haven’t read every post. Not even close. If there are any key ones (in your opinion) I would be grateful for the pointer(s).