People have a tendency to think ALL discrimination is illegal. As you’ve seen it’s not. You can discriminate so long as you have a legitimate reason.
Like in a Chinese resturant. Provided the full time staff falls under a certain number you can hire only Chinese people. The reason being customers in an ethinic resturant expect to be served by the ethniticiy. Of course once they go above a certain number of employees they can’t do this
As it happens, your argument is legally correct as well. 
From Earwood v. Continental Southeastern Lines, Inc., 539 F.2d 1349 (4th Circuit 1976), which addressed a Title VII claim and not a generic EP claim… although the results would be identical under EP analysis.
I don’t think we will ever have laws that outlaw discrimination based on anything. There are some places like Hooters that only hire good looking women because they want to draw in men. Don’t think anyone has tried to challenge that in court or if they have they did not win.
But again, you beg the question of what constitutes a social norm that is a reasonable criterion for discrimination.
Sure it is. I completely agree.
But at one time, it was not (at least in certain parts of the country). At one time, those separate drinking fountains were considered to be commonplace and appropriate reflections of social norms by many of the people who lived in those areas.
Never suggested otherwise.
Never suggested otherwise.
I’m not arguing that these social norms don’t exist. I’m not even arguing that they are unimportant. I’m simply saying that, if you discriminate based on social norms, you are still discriminating, even if the law allows you to do it.
Right. I’ve never once asserted that what the OP’s company is doing is illegal.
Actually, according to the link provided above by CookingWithGas, there has been such a lawsuit, and the parties reached a confidential settlement.
I don’t see men working as Hooters so that wasn’t much of a win was it?
This was not in the OP, but people seem to be ignoring this. How can the employer decide if my hair length relates to my religion. It is presumably well-known that Orthodox Jews for example have longish hair, but how does my employer decide if my religion does so. I presume they’re not even allowed to ask me my religion. If I’m required to to give some kind of “affirmative defense” of my long hair and I say it’s a religious tenet of The Great OldGUy Religion (all hail the great OldGuy), can they fight this? How many adherents do I have to bring forward to testify it is? Does my self-published bible listing this as the 18th commandment count?
If you claim your hair is long due to religion you must tell them that is the reason. Not sure how you are required to prove that you follow that religion.
Some states allow kids to skip vaccines before school on religious grounds but they require no proof. What that has led to is anti-vaccine people lying by saying they skip vaccines for religious reasons when they are simply anti-vaccine.
FWIW, I believe there is precedent for women being asked to change their hairstyles. In the heyday of bouffant, or “beehive” hairstyles, some employers forbade them. Maybe because they suspected such hairdos were rarely taken down and washed. Maybe because they were considered trashy-looking. Or blocked others’ view of whatever they had to see. Anyway, that was a female hairstyle that was forbidden.
I’m hearing your use of “discriminate” in all this as a capital-D “Discriminate”. I.e. The bad kind of discrimination.
The small-d version is nowhere near as bad and is even a good thing. If you choose to come to work as a car salesman dressed in your Freddy Krueger costume I would be discriminating against you if I told you to go home. Nevertheless I don’t think anyone would see that as capital-D Discrimination.
Which begs the questions: If an employee can do his job adequately if his hair is kept long for religious reasons, why the assumption that he can’t do his job adequately if his hair is long because he likes it that way?
I’ve posted a new thread in Great Debates with my thoughts on this.
Well, as others have pointed out, and as i have agreed, there are some issues that are bigger, or more “bad,” than others.
Really? That’s the example you’re going with? A Freddy Krueger costume? Talk about grasping at straws.
But let’s play along with your stupid hypothetical for a minute.
If you sent me home for wearing a Freddy Krueger costume, arguing that it was inappropriate attire, that’s one thing. But if you sent me home, and then allowed a woman to work in a Freddy Krueger costume, then that’s something else altogether. And this second scenario is far closer to the OP’s example than yours.
If you have any further trouble making relevant analogies, i’d be happy to help.
Or alternatively simply require all employees be able to speak & understand Mandarin or Cantonese.
OK - try a local country club for example. They permit a male life guard to wear just swim shorts, but require a female life guard to wear either a bikini or a one piece swim suit, ensuring her breasts are covered. Do you think such a policy should be permitted by the country club, or should either the female lifeguards be permitted to work topless or the male guards required to wear a t-shirt?
Fine, try this:
You (presumably a male) come to work in a dress and wig with lipstick and high heels. Your hirsute (for the sake of example) arms and legs and beard are plain to see as well.
You are wearing the same sort of outfit that a woman there would wear.
You are freaking my customers out and I send you home.
That better for you?
You’re pretty desperate, aren’t you?
Having already conceded that some discrimination is not as bad as others, and that some things pose less of an affront to general decorum than others, i’m now placed in the position being asked to argue that exposure to difference in hair length is the functional equivalent of exposure to women’s breasts.
Same with Whack-a-Mole’s new example (hey, second time lucky, right?).
I’m really not interested in playing the game. I’ve made clear my general position on equality between the sexes. I also think that there are areas where certain distinctions are appropriate, not least because of the comfort of the very people concerned, i.e., the employees themselves.
In an ideal world, we would not care whether or not women work topless as lifeguards, or whether men wear lipstick and high heels. But these examples are, in my opinion, silly precisely because the people who are seeking jobs are far less likely to even want such a situation than the example given in the OP.
Out of interest, what do you think is the ratio of long-haired men who need jobs to women who want to expose their tits at work? Or the ratio of long-haired men who need jobs to men who want to go to work in lipstick and heels?
My argument about hair was based precisely on the fact that, despite arguments about social custom, hair length has ceased to really mean very much. You can find urban professionals and country rednecks with long hair, as well as rural professionals and urban rednecks; northerners and southerners; lawyers and bartenders and doctors and teachers. A guy walking down the street with long hair doesn’t even get a second glance in most small towns, let alone in large cities. When you can say the same about a topless woman, or a guy in lipstick and heels (not to mention, in the case of the woman, issues of exposure laws), then get back to me.
This has been posted for 27 minutes and not one person has said that they are in favor of topless female lifeguards?
I’ll do the honors then 
And of course it does come down to what is considered “appropriate” and “decent” by the standards of the time/place.
I was completely waiting for that!
Exactly - it comes down to what is considered appropriate and decent. It’s not a mechanical decision that if men can do X, women can do X.
The whole point of it was to elicit a response like this. To show you, if you were able to realize it, that you are simply arguing over where a line is - you aren’t making a principled argument, you are, like everyone else, making an argument based on the facts of a particular situation. Saying male nipples should be allowed and female one’s shouldn’t because of public reaction, or more men wanting to have long hair than women wanting to be topless at work shows your argument isn’t one based on principle, it is one based on practicality.
Your whole argument now is “long hair on men has become accepted.” Don’t you see how far from principle that is? Topless women and men in drag - not accepted - not allowed. All you are doing now is arguing on what society finds acceptable, rather than the principle of discrimination.
Personally, I think that an employer not allowing men to have long hair is, in most situations, making a mistake. But it’s his or her mistake to make.
Personally, I’d gamble more if all the casino employees were hot females that pranced around buck naked, so obviously they’re not trying hard enough.