> Discriminating on the basis of sports fandom, haircut or taste in music is perfectly legal. IIUC, correlation of any of those with any of the protected class

> Discriminating on the basis of sports fandom, haircut or taste in music is perfectly legal. IIUC, correlation of any of those with any of the protected classes will land you in trouble though (and I would guess at least the second two from your list are definitely so correlated). As a result, again IIUC, all the large companies(+) follow, in practice, a European-style approach: there has to be a well-documented, based on some clearly-non-discriminatory criteria (++), reason for firing you (hence performance-improvement-plans, etc, etc). [+] large companies == worth suing - again IIUC small companies can basically do what you say [++] I think that still ends up being easier than firing people in many European countries, though