Is it legal to let people search for professionals by gender? Prompted by the list of injunction demands from a recent lawsuit against Uber, I'm curious whether or not it's legal in California, Texas and elsewhere to discriminate on a profession such as a barber by sex. What about a doctor? A nurse? A masseuse? An Uber driver? A real-estate agent? A cook? A general contractor? If it's legal, we start up with personal discrimination&nbsp;&mdash; letting and abetting a natural person customer to specify and select a doctor/barber/driver/etc by gender. But, then, wouldn't supply and demand laws dictate the necessity for corporate discrimination at a certain point? Would that be legal? Where is the line drawn? Specifically, would it be legal to have listings where in search of a professional in a given occupation, the end customer could explicitly specify their search preference by gender?
It is not legal for an employer to discriminate on the basis of sex anywhere in the US (see http://www.eeoc.gov/laws/types/sex.cfm). Exemptions exist where the discrimination is for bona fide occupational qualifications and, irrelevantly, religious reasons. It is completely legal for a consumer to discriminate on the basis of anything they want to. It is also legal for a business to assist the consumer in that discrimination. Bona fide occupational qualifications generally only apply to instances in which the BFOQ is considered reasonably necessary to the normal operation of a particular business. Mere customer satisfaction, or lack thereof, is not enough to justify a BFOQ defence, as noted in the cases Diaz v. Pan Am. World Airways, Inc. and Wilson v. Southwest Airlines Co.. Therefore, customer preference for females does not make femininity a BFOQ for the occupation of flight attendant. However, there may be cases in which customer preference is a BFOQ—for example, femininity is reasonably necessary for Playboy Bunnies. Customer preference can "'be taken into account only when it is based on the company's inability to perform the primary function or service it offers,' that is, where sex or sex appeal is itself the dominant service provided." None of the occupations you mention would, on the face of it, meet the requirements to be BFOQ. Allowing their customers to express a preference for a specific gender may impact on the capacity for the business to deliver on that preference but it would not generally allow a BFOQ defence if this impacted their hiring policies. A possible exception is if the business catered to that preference exclusively, for example, an all female gym with all female staff but I am not aware that this has ever been tested and if a male personal trainer wanted to take them on he may very well win. As an aside, there is no BFOQ defence for racial discrimination except for artistic works where the first amendment rights overrule the anti-discrimination laws.
This could be a violation of the Fair Housing Act, but Fair Housing v. Roommate.com, 521 F.3d 1157 says that we find that the FHA doesn’t apply to the sharing of living units The crux of the argument is that a room in a house is not a "dwelling", since it is not a complete living unit. Whether or not courts outside the 9th Circuit follow suit remains to be seen. Florida state law (760.29) states exceptions to its anti-discrimination laws, covering for instance Any single-family house sold or rented by its owner, provided such private individual owner does not own more than three single-family houses at any one time. If that is the case, then the exemption exists if the rental a. Without the use in any manner of the sales or rental facilities or the sales or rental services of any real estate licensee or such facilities or services of any person in the business of selling or renting dwellings, or of any employee or agent of any such licensee or person; and b. Without the publication, posting, or mailing, after notice, of any advertisement or written notice in violation of s. 760.23(3) Another exemption exists if Rooms or units in dwellings containing living quarters occupied or intended to be occupied by no more than four families living independently of each other, if the owner actually maintains and occupies one of such living quarters as his or her residence. Your attorney (hint) will be able to interpret that complicated section of the law.
canada Guidance from the Government of Canada Yes. The Government of Canada's guide on legislative drafting has a section on gender-neutral language. It emphasizes that &quot;gender-specific language should not be used in legislation.&quot; The first-listed alternative strategy (alongside others) is to &quot;use the singular 'they' and its other grammatical forms... to refer to indefinite pronouns and singular nouns.&quot; It acknowledges that &quot;[i]n the past, the masculine pronoun was commonly used in the English language to signify the non-specific 'he or she'&quot; but that &quot;[i]t is now generally well-accepted that gender-specific language should only be used for references to persons of one gender or the other.&quot; One example from the guide: Every taxpayer shall file their tax return no later than April 30 of the year following the year in which they earned the income on which they are paying taxes. Guidance from the British Columbia Law Institute In the guide, Gender Diversity in Legal Writing, the institute explains: Canadian lawyers no longer write law, or write about the law, as if it only applies to men of European descent who own real property. ... Language and the law continue to evolve, moving towards even more inclusive language in legal writing. ... The highest levels of our profession have recognized that gender inclusivity is a matter of justice and professionalism. The British Columbia courts require all counsel to identify themselves and their pronouns. ... We have adopted gender-inclusive ways of referring to people, in particular the use of “they” as a singular pronoun. The guide says: They/them is also used as a gender non-specific singular pronoun when a writer does not know a person’s pronouns. Just like the pronoun “you,” they/them can be used in singular or plural forms. One example it provides: Minister Williams said they misspoke when they said their budget was “balanced to the last penny.” French text It is slightly more complex to render French legal writing to be gender-inclusive, given that adjectives and third-person plural pronouns are gendered, but the Government of Canada's Translation Bureau shares several resources, including guidance from the Commission de la construction du Québec, and an article from the Canadian Bar Review.
Not in the state of California. California law prohibits discrimination based on source of income; only discrimination based on amount of income is allowed. See the California Government Code, section 12955. It is not even legal to indicate a preferred source of income in the advertisement; landlords may ask prospective tenants about the source of income, but may not discriminate or indicate preference for a particular source (provided it's a lawful source). Also, you can't really force a city to re-zone based on "I'll make sure this bad thing doesn't happen." If the city doesn't want to re-zone, they won't re-zone. You have no right to force them to re-zone; this is especially true when the property was purchased under those zoning rules (if the buyer didn't like them, they didn't have to buy).
In this statement of &quot;Patient Rights &amp; Responsibilities from Nash UNC it is said that: A patient has the right to know the names and the jobs of his or her caregivers. But I do not find any actual law that establishes such a right. Hospitals usually have a policy that doctors and other caregivers must wear name-tags and identify themselves to patients, but that does not necessarily apply to questions after the fact, nor can I be sure that any law mandates such a policy.
In the United States, we use the phrase "Reasonable Person" which is not to say an average person or a simple man, but an individual who understands the limitations of the situation and would act in accordance with that knowledge. For example, if a doctor improperly rendered help a patient, his actions would be evaluated based on reasonable knowledge of people with his medical knowledge, where as a person practicing medicine without a license would be subjected to a more common-man standard. The phrase person is therefor substituted for a reasonable individual and thus, a "Reasonable Landlord/Renter" could exist in housing cases, or a "Reasonable Doctor" in medical torts or "a Reasonable Woman" in sexual assault cases, so the "Reasonable Person" is often used to allow the jury to put themselves in the shoes of the witnesses and the accused and see how they would react (Historically, the term was called a "Reasonable Man" though "Reasonable Person" was used to make the term more neutral to what the definition of "Man" was (A human male or a member of the Human Species, regardless of gender).
Anti-discrimination laws only apply to people, see here – &quot;No person in the United States shall, on the ground of race, color, or national origin be excluded from participation in, be denied the benefits of, or be otherwise subjected to discrimination under any program to which this part applies&quot;. Genetic information anti-discrimination laws are limited to employment and insurance, see here. In addition, I'm betting that your dog cannot meet the university admission standards (lack of a transcript is fatal to the plan).
There is a good answer at the Skeptics StackExchange here. Its three most relevant references are: 42 U.S.C. Chapter 21, especially Subchapter VI (applies only to employers with fifteen or more employees every day in at least 20 calendar weeks in a year) An example case, Wilson v. Southwest Airlines Co. 517 F. Supp. 292 (N.D. Tex. 1981) Katie Manley, The BFOQ Defense: Title VII’s Concession to Gender Discrimination, 16 Duke Journal of Gender Law &amp; Policy 169-210 (2009) Wilson v Southwest held that being attractive and female is not a Bona Fide Occupational Qualification (BFOQ) for being a flight attendant, even when the company marketed themselves using female sexuality: sex does not become a BFOQ merely because an employer chooses to exploit female sexuality as a marketing tool or to better ensure profitability Most scholars believe that the BFOQ exception would not apply to Hooters servers for the same reason. The job is serving food, and the sexualized nature of the service is just the manner in which they do the job, not a requirement of the primary job itself. Hooters has never had a discrimination suit go to trial, however has been sued and settled out of court multiple times. Employment discrimination based on gender has been allowed only in cases where the primary product being sold (not merely the manner of delivery of the primary product) requires a particular gender. One example would be sexual entertainment. This would include strip clubs, modelling agencies, Nevada brothels, etc. I'll say it one other way. Simply offering attractive female service as part of a business strategy is not enough to trigger a BFOQ exception. To allow a BFOQ defence based on an employer's desired manner or means of achieving its primary business purpose would render the statute inoperative, and the BFOQ exception would &quot;swallow the rule&quot; Phillips v. Martin Marietta 400 U.S. 542 (1971). (This paragraph taken from here.)