How do people hire only specific demographics but not face discrimination suits? I like the idea that businesses can specifically hire homeless people who need it, but what I'm not quite sure of is how businesses are able to do that on an arbitrary basis, because as far as I know they are supposed to make the position publicly available and conduct interviews for any applicants.
You don't specify a jurisdiction, so this answer will be as general as possible, but specify jurisdictions for examples. You are under two misconceptions: 1) The arbitrary selection (hereafter referred to as "discrimination") is illegal in general. 2) A position is required to be publicly announced Discrimination As a general rule, discrimination is legal, acceptable, and in some cases required; however, many places forbid discrimination on specific attributes. For example, US law forbids discrimination on sex, race, religion, and national origin, among other things, barring a specific demonstrable need; all forms of discrimination that are not forbidden by law are allowable. For example, my department has the following legal discriminatory biases: a bias against those who lack university degrees, a bias in favor of a specific local university (which about half my department graduated from), and a bias for our own membership (e.g. promoting from within). Open job postings As a general rule, a company is not required to publicly announce positions. Governments are often required to, sometimes by their own rules, but this is to protect against corruption and cronyism, rather than an absolute. For example, there is not a public posting for, say, US Supreme Court Justices or Cabinet Secretaries. Larger corporations, especially publicly traded ones, often adopt similar rules, to protect the company and shareholders from internal corruption (e.g. a manager hiring a friend to a position that they are not qualified for, or receiving a kickback bribe for their hiring decision), but they are not required to unless a specific law or program they are enrolled into requires them to do so. For example, some Federal Contractors are required to post their positions publicly, as a condition of their contracts. So, in summary, there is no reason why a business cannot arbitrarily hire a homeless person specifically for being homeless, unless a) homelessness becomes a legally protected category, or b) a specific rule or government contract provision requires public posting of open positions.
In Great Britain Employees have two types of protections: contractual and statutory. It would be in breach of contract (&quot;wrongful dismissal&quot;) for an employer to dismiss without notice for job hunting but contractually there is nothing to stop an employer dismissing for any reason if they give the notice required (which may be only a week or two, say). Statutory protection may, however, prevent &quot;unfair dismissal&quot; but this generally only applies if someone has been employed for at least two years. There are some exceptions - e.g. dismissal as an act of religious/racial/sex discrimination etc. is prohibited even if the employee has less than 2 years service but these exceptions do not include job-hunting. So someone who has been employed for less than 2 years could be dismissed with notice for job hunting. There are also contractual and statutory protections in Northern Ireland. The contractual ones are the same as in the rest of the UK but some of the details of the statutory protections are different from GB.
It sounds like you've read about two party consent and public spaces. But while anyone can sue, it's winning a case that's relevant. "My client respects the applicant's beliefs, but choosing to express beliefs in such a way during a job interview indicated sufficiently questionable judgement that my client was unable to consider the applicant further for the advertised position." "It has also become apparent that the plaintiff was not acting in good faith in making an application for employment." Court finds for the defendant and orders the plaintiff to pay costs.
No The argument is vacuous in any event because AFAIK all jurisdictions that enforce sex discrimination laws have parental leave (paid or unpaid), not maternity leave so a man is just as likely to need it as a woman. This, of course, raises the issue of discrimination by marital status (on the basis that unmarried people are arguably less likely to have children) or age (on the basis that people outside 'childbearing' age are less likely to have children; fortunately these types of discrimination are also illegal. Notwithstanding, the loopholess you think there are in the laws are simply not there. For example s14 "Discrimination in employment or in superannuation" of australia Sex Discrimination Act 1984 starts with: (1) It is unlawful for an employer to discriminate against a person on the ground of the person's sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, intersex status, marital or relationship status, pregnancy or potential pregnancy, breastfeeding or family responsibilities: Later in s30 "Certain discrimination on ground of sex not unlawful" it says: (2) (a) the duties of the position can be performed only by a person having particular physical attributes (other than attributes of strength or stamina) that are not possessed by persons of a different sex from the relevant sex; If the job requires excessive strength or stamina, then you test your recruits for the level of strength or stamina the job requires.
Yes this is legal. Under the Civil Rights Act of 1964, there is an exemption under Title VII - Equal Employment Opportunity that allows for discrimination based on a protected trait when there is a Bona Fide Occupational Qualification (BFOQ). The wording is such that it can cover a slew of jobs that have just cause to discriminate against someone in their hiring process including certain roles for actors. However, it does not allow for wholesale discrimination. In order to qualify, an employer must prove three things: A direct relationship between the trait and the ability to perform the job the BFOQ's relation to the &quot;essence&quot; or &quot;central mission of the employer's business&quot; That there is no less restrictive or reasonable alternative As an example, a film about the work of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. would have a BFOQ in hiring a man of African descent to portray Dr. King, given that he is trying to accurately portray a historical person (direct relationship) to further educate the public about that historical person's work (Central Mission) and that a &quot;White MLK&quot; would offend audiences. While many roles in the hypothetical film would also qualify for the BFOQ, this doesn't give the production a blank slate... there is no need to discriminate against a set designer or a camera man, so a studio deciding to hire an all black production crew would face some legal troubles. The restaurant chain Hooters, famous for it's amazing chicken wings they served, has a sometimes noticed habit of hiring very attractive women as their wait staff, almost to the point of exclusively. All joking aside, they do get away with this by making a distinction that they are &quot;casting&quot; not &quot;hiring&quot; waitresses and their brand identity is entirely attractive ladies and not really the wings they serve. This is a BFOQ (and they often come up in discussions about this matter of law). With that in mind however, only Hooter's hiring of wait staff has a BFOQ. The person in the kitchen cooking the wings could be a middle-aged balding man with a noticeable gut and managers at stores can be men or women who aren't as attractive as the standards used for wait staff (or were former wait staff but are not as young looking). Works adapting books and comics may have a little more leeway as certain characters may be portrayed as one race but have had their race switched for various reasons and with different success. No one batted an eye when Lawrence Fishburne portrayed Perry White, Clark Kent's editor in Man of Steel or Samuel L. Jackson as Nick Fury in the various Marvel films (an unusual example as traditionally white Nick Fury was depicted as an African American in Marvel's Ultimate Marvel line). His first appearance in August of 2001 in Ultimate Marvel Team Up, and a second appearance in Ultimate X-Men were of a non-descript African American, before his appearance as a regular in The Ultimates in March 2002, where his look was not only modeled after Jackson, Jackson was specifically &quot;cast&quot; as the visual model for the character, which he leapt at the idea (reportedly his initial pay was quite low given his standing as an actor with the difference made up for by a request of some exclusive artwork and an opportunity to play the character in a then not planned film.). There are even some fictional works where the change in race might be the point of the work itself (for example, in William Shakespeare's play Othello, the titular character is explicitly of North African descent and many consider the work a very early rebuke of concepts of racial superiority (it's very much the subject of debate as to whether Othello being black was an important concept to the play or the Bard just added it for something a little different)). During a 1997 Shakespeare Theater Company's 1997 adaptation, to hammer the &quot;it's about race&quot; side of the argument home, cast very much white Patrick Stewart to play the part of Othello, while the rest of the cast played by African American actors/actresses, a flip of the traditional depiction to highlight that Othello's race separates him from the rest of the characters in the play, regardless of what his actual race was. This play would have a BFOQ to discriminate against white actors seeking to play the villain Iago (IMO, one of the best villains ever written.) because it's important that Iago and Othello not share racial traits for the entire story to work. While acting is usually where this comes up a lot, there are other places where it might be useful to discriminate against a protected class. For example, when hiring a pastor for a church, it would be very important to make sure the Pastor or other spiritual leader was not only of the correct faith, but correct sect within that faith to minister to the flock. A Seventh Day Adventist would be just as successful preaching to Catholic Church as a devout Muslim. For start, all three differ on which day is &quot;the sabbath&quot;: Catholics say Sunday (the day of the week Jesus rose from the dead), Seventh Day Adventists say Saturday, the day that those of Jewish faith like Jesus would have observed as the Sabbath, and Muslims say it's Friday (I don't know why off the top of my head). More practically, one might have a BFOQ for not hiring male therapists if one is working at a women's shelter (while gender has no bearing on being an effective therapist, many of the patients at a women's shelter might have problems discussing their situation with a man because most women's shelter's clients were abused by men in their lives, which might cause a delay in healing if the therapist working with them was also a man.).
In the US, there have been a few cases (EEOC v. The Children's Home, Inc., Michael W. Naylor v. City of Burbank) in the realm of employment discrimination. There may well be more cases which are settled without going to court. There are somewhat more court cases in the UK, see here for a number of relevant categories. In addition, there are significant cases regarding discrimination against gay males, for example Bostock v. Clayton Co, decided by SCOTUS this summer.
It may be discrimination, but it is not discrimination based upon any reason that the company is prohibited from engaging in. This conduct is legal in pretty much all U.S. jurisdictions.
The only excuse would be if you didn't know that your actions were a crime (not ignorance of the law, that's not an excuse, but ignorance of facts). For example, if your boss doesn't want you to serve a customer because that customer is gay, and your boss tells you "don't serve that customer, he was here last week and didn't pay the bill", you would be fine. Or if the boss of a demolition company sends a crew out to demolish the house of a personal enemy (surely a crime), the crew would have no idea that their action is a crime, so they should be fine. But if the boss of a bar or club orders a bouncer to beat up a customer, then the bouncer would know that he's committing a crime, and there is no excuse possible.