Originally posted by JayHoover
To help you out, Billybob, here's some information I found on federal anti-discrimination laws.
http://www.nolo.com/article.cfm/Obj...C-9CBE-42EF-917012F2F6758F92/111/259/283/ART/
Race Discrimination in the Workplace
It is illegal to discriminate against employees because of their race.
Federal law and the laws of the 50 states prohibit race discrimination and harassment in employment.
This means that it is illegal for you to treat an employee or applicant differently because of his or her race or color in regard to all phases of the employment relationship, including: help-wanted ads, interviews, pre-employment testing, hiring, job assignments, shift assignments, promotions, compensation, benefits, job training, layoffs or termination.
This prohibition includes discrimination based on stereotypes or assumptions you may have about people of a certain race -- for example, if you think people of a certain race are lazy or are prone to violence.
In addition to prohibiting intentional discrimination, these laws prohibit employer practices that seem neutral but that have a disproportionate impact on people because of their race or color. Such a policy is legal only if there's a valid business reason for its existence. For example, if you refuse to hire people who don't meet minimum height and weight criteria, you may be discriminating against people of Asian descent, who will be disproportionately affected by this rule. The rule will only pass legal muster if you can show it is clearly related to the physical demands of the particular job -- heavy lifting in a warehouse, for example.
Furthermore:
Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 (42 U.S.C. §§ 2000e and following)
Title VII
prohibits employers from discriminating against applicants and employees on the basis of
race or color, religion, sex, pregnancy, childbirth and national origin (including membership in a Native American tribe).
It also prohibits employers from retaliating against an applicant or employee who asserts his or her rights under the law. For example, an employer cannot fire someone for complaining about race discrimination.
Let's examine the exemptions, and the readers can be the judge of whether the noble Billybob is a stand-up citizen, or a racist:
http://www.nolo.com/article.cfm/Obj...C-9CBE-42EF-917012F2F6758F92/111/259/283/ART/
Exceptions to Employment Discrimination Laws
Sometimes you can discriminate against a group of people -- if the particular job you are filling requires a person with specific characteristics.
In a very rare and narrow exception to antidiscrimination laws, you can discriminate against people on the basis of gender, religion, national origin, age or another protected characteristic (but never race) if the very nature of the job requires you to do so.
This exception -- called the bona fide occupational qualification (BFOQ) exception -- arises from the fact that some jobs require people who have certain characteristics that the law usually protects, such as people of a certain national origin or people of a certain religion.
For example, if you are a movie director searching for someone to play the role of Hamlet's mother, you can discriminate against men in filling the part. Or if you are an official in the Catholic Church, you can discriminate against non-Catholics when hiring priests.
In order to use this exception, you must prove that no member of the group that you want to discriminate against can perform the job. This can be a tough thing to prove, and courts often reject arguments that most employers would find perfectly legitimate. For example, the airlines can't discriminate against older applicants when hiring flight attendants simply because they think that passengers prefer young pretty faces. If you look at the actual job duties -- maintaining order in the plane's cabin, serving meals and beverages -- a 45-year-old is just as able to perform the job of flight attendant as a 25-year-old.
There are times, however, when an employer has no choice but to use the BFOQ exception. For example, the law has allowed BFOQs in the following instances:
An employer was allowed to discriminate against women and hire only male attendants for its company bathroom.
An airline was allowed to discriminate on the basis of religion and hire only Muslim pilots to fly certain routes in Saudi Arabia where Saudi Arabian law prohibited, under punishment of death, any non-Muslims to enter the area.
Billybob, I'm not sure, but I don't think your "Wealthy white home owners won't want me to hire Jewish black women" qualifies as an exemption.
