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Iowa Court: "Hotness" discrimination is legal

woolfe9998

woolfe9998

Lifer
This story is all over the place today. Here's one article with photos:

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/art...t-sacked-attractive-hits-court-rules-her.html

Summary: Woman works as dental hygenist for 10 years. Dentist fires her because he finds her attractive and is worried that he will start an affair and ruin his marriage. She is a good employee and is not alleged to have flirted or done anything inappropriate other than possibly wearing "tight clothes" to work, though this is disputed.

She sues for gender discrimination. The Court rules that she wasn't terminated based on gender, but based on attraction, and that nothing in the law prohibits discrimination based on attraction.

This strikes me as a correct ruling. I think it implies that someone could be fired simply for being ugly as well. The same logic would apply in reverse.
 
The whole case is awkward. I have to laud him a little for doing this before something happened (assuming she would have been ok with it), for affairs happen all the time in situations like this and he preempted that.

It seems a bit of a loophole in the law, though.
 
People are so f-n stupid.
You never tell someone why you terminate them.
You hire people at "at will" contracts.
Problem solved.
 
Doppel said:
The whole case is awkward. I have to laud him a little for doing this before something happened (assuming she would have been ok with it), for affairs happen all the time in situations like this and he preempted that.

It seems a bit of a loophole in the law, though.
Click to expand...

The idea that a boss should be able to fire employees due to his inability to not sexually harass them seems awfully shitty. I'm happy to hear that the court ruled this way.
 
Doppel said:
The whole case is awkward. I have to laud him a little for doing this before something happened (assuming she would have been ok with it), for affairs happen all the time in situations like this and he preempted that.

It seems a bit of a loophole in the law, though.
Click to expand...

It's an interesting issue when examined as "gender discrimination." On the one hand, she would not have been terminated but for her gender. On the other, her gender was an insufficient condition. She had to be female and attractive. Ordinarily a discrimination claim can be valid if the prohibited discriminatory motive was a substantial factor in the termination. It need not have been the sole factor. However, I do see the court's logic here - her gender was not really the essence of why she was fired. It could have been anyone he was attracted to, even a man, if he had been gay.
 
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Patranus said:
People are so f-n stupid.
You never tell someone why you terminate them.
You hire people at "at will" contracts.
Problem solved.
Click to expand...

"Melissa Nelson, 32, was sent the raunchy text by Iowa dentist James Knight around six months before she was sacked."

"Knight had previously made inappropriate comments at work about his employee's clothing being too tight or distracting."

"Dr Knight acknowledges he once told Nelson that if she saw his pants bulging, she would know her clothing was too revealing."

Sounds like sexual harassment to me. She and her lawyer are stupid for not filing sexual harassment complaints.
 
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Wreckem said:
"Melissa Nelson, 32, was sent the raunchy text by Iowa dentist James Knight around six months before she was sacked."

"Knight had previously made inappropriate comments at work about his employee's clothing being too tight or distracting."

Sounds like sexual harassment to me. She should have filed sexual harassment claims, rather than gender discrimination claims.
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Yeah, the article mentions that Nelson did not feel harassed or particularly bothered by the comments, so she declined to sue for sexual harassment. However, I think it's more likely her lawyer advised her that whatever the comments were they didn't rise to the level of legal harassment. Hence, she pursued only the discrimination claim.
 
woolfe9998 said:
Yeah, the article mentions that Nelson did not feel harassed or particularly bothered by the comments, so she declined to sue for sexual harassment. However, I think it's more likely her lawyer advised her that whatever the comments were they didn't rise to the level of legal harassment. Hence, she pursued only the discrimination claim.
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Repeated comments of those natures rise to sexual harassment. The problem is she saw him as a father figure and didn't do anything at the time the statements were made, not expecting to get fired at a later date. You also have to exhaust administrative avenues before suing. If she had made sexual harassment claims with the EEOC and was then later fired like she was she could have gone after him for retaliation in addition to sexual harassment.
 
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Doppel said:
The whole case is awkward. I have to laud him a little for doing this before something happened (assuming she would have been ok with it), for affairs happen all the time in situations like this and he preempted that.

It seems a bit of a loophole in the law, though.
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Didn't you read the article? He was already under her spell. It was the wife that told him to fire her. And so he did...
 
Iowa is at at-will state. Case closed. Don't know why this even made it to court.

Employers can fire you because the day ends in y if they want.
 
Patranus said:
People are so f-n stupid.
You never tell someone why you terminate them.
You hire people at "at will" contracts.
Problem solved.
Click to expand...

This.

Employees who are severely overweight, smoke, stink, whatever... If you want to fire them just tell them that business has slowed down and you can't afford to keep them on.

Why business owners think they need to give the "real reason" in just insane. Why give them ammo to use against you later in court if it ever comes to that. Dump their ass and move on...
 
Patranus said:
People are so f-n stupid.
You never tell someone why you terminate them.
You hire people at "at will" contracts.
Problem solved.
Click to expand...
Terminating someone without extremely good cause and sharing that cause with them is tantamount to saying "You're going to need something to tide you over until you find another job, and I think it should be suing me."
 
Could she have kept her job if she was veiled?

Are our minds so unsophisticated that we can't guide our thoughts away from our primal urges? What's next? Legal hair draggings?
 
Wreckem said:
Repeated comments of those natures rise to sexual harassment. The problem is she saw him as a father figure and didn't do anything at the time the statements were made, not expecting to get fired at a later date. You also have to exhaust administrative avenues before suing. If she had made sexual harassment claims with the EEOC and was then later fired like she was she could have gone after him for retaliation in addition to sexual harassment.
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Correct, but not knowing what the comments were, or how frequently they were made, I'm going to assume she didn't have a solid case for harassment or she would have pursued it. Hostile environment harassment requires a pattern of conduct.
 
xBiffx said:
Iowa is at at-will state. Case closed. Don't know why this even made it to court.

Employers can fire you because the day ends in y if they want.
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In an at-will state, you still cannot terminate someone for reasons which are illegal under one or more statutes. Title VII is a federal statute, meaning it doesn't matter which state you're in. However, doubtless Iowa has it's own anti-discrimination statute as well. So to answer your question, the case went to court because the plaintiff alleged gender discrimination which, if true, is illegal under federal and state law.
 
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werepossum said:
I'm picturing Muddy Waters in drag singing "Mannish girl".

She kinda looks like his daughter/son.
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While I wouldn't say she's ugly, I agree she isn't the hottest thing. Then again, it's irrelevant as the dentist clearly thought she was. Perhaps "hot" to him meant "hotter than my wife," which, if you look at the photo of his wife, isn't saying much.
 
A Buddhist would say, "Suffering arises from desire, therefore life is suffering." He or she would also say, "An end to suffering is possible if you let go of desire and stop becoming so attached to our ever so fleeting feelings and temporary things around us."

If you pull back far enough, everything is temporary. From that distance it's also possible to see how our thoughts can have wider negative effects on our future. For example: his wife may find it impossible to trust him now.
 
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