What are some legal reasons you are allowed to deny employment to someone? Obviously merit, work experience, training, education, etc., but what are some other reasons, either fair or unfair, that it is legal to deny a person a job?
For example, can you deny employment to everyone named Jack? Can you have a “Gingers need not apply” rule? What if the applicant was the sister of someone you had a nasty breakup with?
Edit: I’m not asking for any particular reason, nor am I in charge of the hiring or firing at my job. I was just wondering.
You’re thinking about this the wrong way. There are illegal reasons to deny eimployment. To some extent, what these are depend on where you are, but in general they include things like race, sex, religion, etc.
Any reason not on that list of illegal reasons is a legal reason to deny employment.
Ability to perform job duties. You don’t hire somebody with a lumbar spinal fusion to work in construction, and an employer is legally justified in denying employment to people who are physically unable to perform the inherent duties of the job. Of course, this is limited by the ADA and by state legislation requiring employers to hire people with pre-existing disabilities subject to reimbursement by the state for workers’ compensation claims and stuff like that.
Yeah, it’s a lot easier (and more thorough) to list the half dozen or so illegal reasons than to try to think of and list all umpty-thousand legal reasons.
The most surprising answer is, is “no reason at all.”
“I just didn’t like him,” is the real reason most people fail to get a job. Of course no company will tell you that. It just avoids issues so they always say, “there were other more qualified applicants.”
Whether this is true or not, it’d be hard to prove unless you had an “in” in the company who could prove otherwise.
When I did H/R I would conduct the opening interview and you’d be surprised what people would tell me.
I had one guy tell me “Well I ain’t much of a team player, I like things my own way.”
OK that’s just what every company wants to hear.
I was interviewing one guy for the job as a wedding manager. He would book all the weddings for the hotel.
I asked him “How do you deal with difficult or unreasonable or excitable people”? He tells me “Well I don’t do well at that, I usually blow up and yell at them, but then I can calm then down and we get on OK.”
I was like “Yeah that’s just the kind of attitude I look for in a person dealing with brides to be.”
I used to think “Why do H/R people ask such stupid “pat” questions, when they won’t get an honest answer.” Well once I did the job I found out, a lot of people WILL give you an honest answer.
Sure a lot of dishonest people will slip through but still…
Recently, I have heard of places denying employment because people don’t have/don’t have enough photo ID.
In some Provinces, the Government Health Card has the owner’s picture on it. That should be enough, but apparently a lot of employers want a second piece with a picture. The problem is, not everyone has a driver’s licence, and if a person isn’t a teenager, they don’t need an Age of Majority card, which is usually what one would use to prove they’re of age enough to get into a bar or buy booze. The only other piece of Government-issued ID that everyone has to have, the Social Insurance Card, doesn’t have a picture on it.
It appears that the reason most employers are using is that with widespread identity theft these days, they want to make sure exactly who they are hiring.
Fortuneately, that’s much clearer in the states. ID requirements are spelled ot in lists A, B & C on the I-9. You must have a docment from list A (for most people, a passport) or you must have BOTH one from list B (for most people, a driver’s license or state non-drier ID) AND list C (for most people, a social security card)
To the best of my knowledge, It is illegal to require anything in addition, or to specify thast you will only accept certain IDs from those lists. IE, if they meet the ID requirements, such as hvaing a passport, you cannot compel them to produce their social security card.
Yes, I remember the requirements on the I-9. I worked in Minnesota while I was going to school there back in the mid-90s, and as I recall, all I needed was my Ontario Driver’s License (because it had my picture on it) and my Social Security card (which I had because I have dual citizenship).
You can discriminate one those things if you a very, very, good reason that it’s a vital to the job that one be of a certain sex, race, religion, etc. For example a school (public or private) might require a PE teacher to be of a certain sex since part of their job involves supervising their students in the lockerroom. Or Hooters where part of their business model involves large breasted women in skimpy uniforms serving food; they can insist on only hiring attractive women as waitresses or hostesses, but would run into major problems if they tried that with kitchen staff or coporate office jobs.
I’m really surprised at this question. I’m curious: why did you think there are only certain legal reasons to not hire someone (as opposed to the correct interpretation, that there are only a few illegal reasons to not hire someone)?
Yes, you can discriminate against anything and anyone not listed on the Equal Opportunity Employment (usually EOE) Act of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. The protected classes: race, color, religion, sex, or national origin.
So, to answer your question, if you wanted to discriminate against Gingers, you could as long as no one could say you were actually discriminating against Irish people.
Not necessarily. If you stated a preference for Gingers then that would give women an unfair advantage over men since that is a female name.
And, as I think of it, if you had a “No Gingers” rule, then the opposite could be said as it would be unfairly discriminating against women. As 0% of men have that name, and say .005% of women have it, then it is skewed against women. I dunno.
As others have pointed out, someone with “Ginger” hair is reflected in race and national origin, both areas identified in discrimination laws. You could add sex to the mix as well.
I always wondered how the ‘national origin’ thing worked. Let’s say everyone from country ‘A’ historically wants to kill everyone from country ‘B’ for whatever political, historical, economic, or religious reason you want to select. This could be Serbians and Croatians, Israelis and Palestinians, etc. Now they have immigrated to the U.S. So, here I am as the owner of a business. I have coincidentally hired nine people who are recent immigrants from Country ‘A’, but when I place a help wanted ad, the only applicants I get for a tenth position are recent immigrants from Country ‘B’. Let’s assume I am the only one who interviews them and I don’t have an opinion about either country or their issues. Does ‘national origin’ really not matter?
While I would obviously want to let the candidate know, “By the way, your nine co-workers are all from Country ‘A’. Will that be a problem?” I would assume no one who desperately needs a job would honestly say “yes”. Likewise, I would assume the nine co-workers, if I asked them, wouldn’t honestly say “no, we do not want to work with this person even though it is a direct violation of the law”. Meanwhile, if I hire this person, I’m likely going to be inviting problems into my business. But, if I tell the candidate up front, then I am also inviting a lawsuit if I don’t hire them. The fact that I warned them about their co-workers could be construed as discriminatory, even if I really didn’t think they were a good fit for the job. So what is the proper solution, especially if the person tells me or is obviously from Country ‘B’ based on their dress/appearance, etc.? This is purely hypothetical, of course, but I have wondered about this.
This must come up on places like cruise ships all the time where they have international crews. Yes, I know that just because someone is from a country that historically hates another doesn’t mean that they will hate each other on a personal level, but if you mix enough of these folks together, someone is going to get pissed off during an election, soccer game, etc, and all hell may break loose.
