Or maybe they’re Twins.
One reason I can see for a small-business exemption to the hiring laws is that enforcement would be extremely difficult due to statistics. If all ten thousand employees of a big company are white, it’s pretty clear that racial discrimination is occurring, but if all four employees of a small company are white, that might just mean that those four happened to be the best (or even only) applicants for their positions.
Also: nepotism. In small business, we seem to condone and even like it. In larger business/politics, we don’t. We are a strange culture.
For the Federal anti-discrimination laws, the small-employer exemption is likely a tip of the hat to the fact that the constitutional authority is mostly if not entirely from the power to regulate interstate commerce. Could it be argued that an employer with one or two or five employees affects interstate commerce? Yes, but it’s easier to argue that an employer with 20 or 50 or 100 employees does. 
I own a small business. All of my employees are white. In the past 15 years I have had one non-white employee. Coincidentally, she was the only non-white applicant I’ve ever had.
I find this hard to swallow. Do you have anything to back it up?
…because “Congress did not want to burden small entities with the costs associated with litigating discrimination claims.”
Miller v. Maxwell’s Intern. Inc., 991 F.2d 583, 587 (9th Cir. 1993). It’s certainly nothing to do with this:
The Civil Rights Act specifically distinguishes between employers which “affect commerce” and those which do not.
The operative words here are “pretty clear”. I agree with your logic, but I think it’s irrelevant. I think the burden of proving the discrimination would be similar in both cases.
I have not noticed that. In my view, we’ve voted in a good number of presidents and senators whose fathers held similar positions. The public might perceive these sons as having had good mentors. The only case I can remember of anti-nepotism resentment was that of Attorney General Robert Kennedy, and that was more because of his lack of experience - i.e., it wasn’t that he unfairly beat out other applicants who were similarly-qualified, but that he unfairly beat out other applicants who were much more qualified.
I guess I should clarify what I meant. There’s a big difference between real nepotism, when the boss gives someone a job an nobody can argue with him, as opposed to where the electorate votes someone in. But still, I don’t see any complaints, or even jealousy, when GHW Bush becomes president, or Mitt Romney becomes governor. We recognize that these people had good training, in very much the same way that a family business stays in the family because the second generation grew up with it and learned every detail of how it works.
I’m from Illinois. Chicago, even. I’m talking the nepotism where jobs, contracts, permits and scholarships are given to family members/friends/donors…we’ve really elevated that sort of thing to an art form, and yes, it gets quite a lot of people upset.
You’re talking about the elected offices themselves, which yes, I agree is fairly different. Bush the Elder didn’t appoint W president.
But I heard hella squawking about Romney thinking he was entitled to political office simply because of who his daddy was, and how much money he has.