The BFOQ: Case Study Of Discrimination In The United States

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The BFOQ
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The BFOQ
Title VII under the Civil Rights Act of 1964 was enacted on July 2nd, 1964 as a mitigation strategy to prohibit any form of discrimination on grounds of a person’s religion, sex, color, race or their national origin. The law was originally meant to solve the problem of discrimination witnessed during voter registration. It was also expected to solve discrimination present at workplaces and schools where there was widespread racial discrimination. However, the law has become an even more relevant tool and has seen to it that hiring and firing processes by many companies are adherent to it.
Case Study of Discrimination
In 1981, Southwest Airlines is told to have …show more content…

Nonetheless, after the court trial, it was decided that Southwest Airline’s marketing policy that involved hiring of attractive female applicants only was a violation of Title VII under the Civil Rights Act of 1964. In addition to the hiring of attractive female flight attendants, the airline company had also made it a requirement that hired applicants should only be of a maximum height of 5 feet 9 inches. Notwithstanding, the court ruled that, the restriction was a barrier to hiring of men applicants and that it was violation of the same act. As a result, the airline company set aside a $1 million fund for penalties alone after the court ordered the company to pay the plaintiffs $275,000 (Justia, …show more content…

Therefore, the job could have been done by either of the genders that applied. For this reason, the defense of the airline company was compromised. This led to the court’s decision that the placement of discriminating conditions such as the maximum height rule and the hiring of attractive female candidates only was a violation of Title VII under the Civil Rights Act of 1964. Indeed, the unlawful and impermissible discrimination exercised by the airline company denied the male applicants the above mentioned privileges and thus was a just cause of action taken by Gregory R.

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