6 ms·

I think it's legal to discriminate based on geographic location.

by eplanit 5y ago

croes 5y ago
So it's legal to discriminate people living in certain neighborhoods?
- kspacewalk2 5y ago
  Why not? Neighbourhood is not a protected status like race, gender, national origin, age, disability, etc.
  - tguedes 5y ago
    Except in America our neighborhoods are heavily influenced by race so I doubt you could legally ban against hiring from a neighborhood made up 90%+ African Americans.
    - swashboon 5y ago
      Well, you wouldn't be sued because you banned hiring from the neighborhood. You would be sued for discriminating against a protected class under a paper thin veil of banning a location.
- bombcar 5y ago
  Requiring that employees live at within X minutes of the job site - likely legal. Forbidding employees from certain locations as a proxy for a protected class - likely illegal. An example: during the sales tax wars many companies would refuse to hire from a state that would could the employee as a tax nexus. This is mostly gone now as the sales tax fight seems mostly over.
  - lostcolony 5y ago
    Is it? Even outside of sales tax, it's additional accounting overhead to handle the withholding and filing for states you aren't in. No idea how much, I would imagine it's dependent on the systems in use, but the organizational incentives for allowing and enabling it are probably horribly misaligned for many companies.
    - bombcar 5y ago
      It's a hassle but not an huge one, and any company that is in a population center that straddles a state border already deals with this (think New York, Chicago, Portland, Minneapolis/St Paul) - once you can handle two states handling additional isn't that painful. More importantly the COST associated is fixed per employee roughly - having an employee in another state doesn't usually change the amount of tax paid, etc - just who it's paid to. This won't be entirely true, but it's close enough - and for companies with outsourced HR (think: ADP) it's even easier. Any company big enough to have a significant number of employees that this applies to would be big enough to eat the cost (and probably already has offices/etc in multiple states as is).
- vageli 5y ago
  It seems in some cases, yes. For instance many police and fire departments require you to live within X miles of the station. It also wouldn't seem odd if a company decided to exclude remote workers from places in which the company does not have a nexus, to avoid further complicating taxes.
- KMag 5y ago
  Presumably that's legal, as long as there isn't a clear correlation between excluded neighborhoods and protected classes. I'm not a lawyer. This is not legal advice.
- lmkg 5y ago
  The thing you're looking for is the legal doctrine of "Disparate Impact." Discrimination against a protected class (like race) is illegal. Geography is not a protected class, and discrimination based on geography is not inherently illegal. But under the doctrine of Disparate Impact, a particular policy of geographic exclusion is illegal if it happens to have outsized effect on a protected class (and has no business justification). Note that Disparate Impact does not require intention!
bob33212 5y ago
Not if the woke crowd gets their way. They got a guy fired from AAPL because they felt "unsafe" due to a book he wrote 6 years ago where he called some SF women useless in a zombie apocalypse. Feeling "threatened" or "violated" by not being able to apply to a job seems just as reasonable.
- hasmolo 5y ago
  this feels a little disingenuous. the dude is a public facing exec that said shitty stuff about women, working at a company that heavily signals it won’t be like that. it seems like a lower level employee with the same views wouldn’t write a book including them or be liable for those views. context is important
  - waheoo 5y ago
    It shouldn't matter what his role is. Saying some off the cuff stuff a few years ago in an obscure book doesn't make a workplace unsafe. That is disingenuous. I've seen people fired for similar "unsafe" bullshit. Literally anything can trigger these deranged individuals. They're just out to play victim and get attention. And no, I don't think all toxic workplace behaviour is like this, many places have narcissists and similar types roaming the halls making things extremely traumatic for many people. That stuff is real and I feel for the people that get out through the ringer by these environments. But a book? 6 years ago? In the context of a zombie apocalypse hypothetical? Get the fuck outa here.
    - hasmolo 5y ago
      “ They have their self-regarding entitlement feminism, and ceaselessly vaunt their independence, but the reality is, come the epidemic plague or foreign invasion, they’d become precisely the sort of useless baggage you’d trade for a box of shotgun shells or a jerry can of diesel.” so this is ok because he’s saying they’re only useless in an apocalyptic scenario? he’s literally saying that the core of women is useless in the “real world”. i understand that it can feel like there’s a group of anonymous “woke thugs” wondering the internet trying to get people. if you feel that way it might be useful for you to try and empathize with why someone would feel that way.
ethbr0 5y ago
It is. Afaict, protected classes and characteristics as of 2021 are: Sex, race, color, religion, national origin, pregnancy and childbirth (and related medical conditions), age (including mandatory retirement), disability (including requiring reasonable accommodation), black lung disease (mine operators), bankruptcy and bad debt, citizenship status, & genetic information. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Employment_discrimination_law_in_the_United_States#History_of_federal_laws https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Employment_discrimination_la...
- ghaff 5y ago
  >citizenship status It's a little more complicated. The person needs to have the legal right to work in the country of course. And, if there are any legal restrictions related to e.g. Federal contracts such as defense contractors often have, a job may be restricted to US citizens.
  - ummonk 5y ago
    "e.g. Federal contracts such as defense contractors often have, a job may be restricted to US citizens." While true, that seems like a rare occurrence. Most jobs I've seen just require US Persons (e.g. to work on space / defense technology) which includes permanent residents.

I think it's legal to discriminate based on geographic location.

croes 5y ago

So it's legal to discriminate people living in certain neighborhoods?

kspacewalk2 5y ago
Why not? Neighbourhood is not a protected status like race, gender, national origin, age, disability, etc.
- tguedes 5y ago
  Except in America our neighborhoods are heavily influenced by race so I doubt you could legally ban against hiring from a neighborhood made up 90%+ African Americans.
  - swashboon 5y ago
    Well, you wouldn't be sued because you banned hiring from the neighborhood. You would be sued for discriminating against a protected class under a paper thin veil of banning a location.
bombcar 5y ago
Requiring that employees live at within X minutes of the job site - likely legal. Forbidding employees from certain locations as a proxy for a protected class - likely illegal. An example: during the sales tax wars many companies would refuse to hire from a state that would could the employee as a tax nexus. This is mostly gone now as the sales tax fight seems mostly over.
- lostcolony 5y ago
  Is it? Even outside of sales tax, it's additional accounting overhead to handle the withholding and filing for states you aren't in. No idea how much, I would imagine it's dependent on the systems in use, but the organizational incentives for allowing and enabling it are probably horribly misaligned for many companies.
  - bombcar 5y ago
    It's a hassle but not an huge one, and any company that is in a population center that straddles a state border already deals with this (think New York, Chicago, Portland, Minneapolis/St Paul) - once you can handle two states handling additional isn't that painful. More importantly the COST associated is fixed per employee roughly - having an employee in another state doesn't usually change the amount of tax paid, etc - just who it's paid to. This won't be entirely true, but it's close enough - and for companies with outsourced HR (think: ADP) it's even easier. Any company big enough to have a significant number of employees that this applies to would be big enough to eat the cost (and probably already has offices/etc in multiple states as is).
vageli 5y ago
It seems in some cases, yes. For instance many police and fire departments require you to live within X miles of the station. It also wouldn't seem odd if a company decided to exclude remote workers from places in which the company does not have a nexus, to avoid further complicating taxes.
KMag 5y ago
Presumably that's legal, as long as there isn't a clear correlation between excluded neighborhoods and protected classes. I'm not a lawyer. This is not legal advice.
lmkg 5y ago
The thing you're looking for is the legal doctrine of "Disparate Impact." Discrimination against a protected class (like race) is illegal. Geography is not a protected class, and discrimination based on geography is not inherently illegal. But under the doctrine of Disparate Impact, a particular policy of geographic exclusion is illegal if it happens to have outsized effect on a protected class (and has no business justification). Note that Disparate Impact does not require intention!

bob33212 5y ago

Not if the woke crowd gets their way. They got a guy fired from AAPL because they felt "unsafe" due to a book he wrote 6 years ago where he called some SF women useless in a zombie apocalypse. Feeling "threatened" or "violated" by not being able to apply to a job seems just as reasonable.

hasmolo 5y ago
this feels a little disingenuous. the dude is a public facing exec that said shitty stuff about women, working at a company that heavily signals it won’t be like that. it seems like a lower level employee with the same views wouldn’t write a book including them or be liable for those views. context is important
- waheoo 5y ago
  It shouldn't matter what his role is. Saying some off the cuff stuff a few years ago in an obscure book doesn't make a workplace unsafe. That is disingenuous. I've seen people fired for similar "unsafe" bullshit. Literally anything can trigger these deranged individuals. They're just out to play victim and get attention. And no, I don't think all toxic workplace behaviour is like this, many places have narcissists and similar types roaming the halls making things extremely traumatic for many people. That stuff is real and I feel for the people that get out through the ringer by these environments. But a book? 6 years ago? In the context of a zombie apocalypse hypothetical? Get the fuck outa here.
  - hasmolo 5y ago
    “ They have their self-regarding entitlement feminism, and ceaselessly vaunt their independence, but the reality is, come the epidemic plague or foreign invasion, they’d become precisely the sort of useless baggage you’d trade for a box of shotgun shells or a jerry can of diesel.” so this is ok because he’s saying they’re only useless in an apocalyptic scenario? he’s literally saying that the core of women is useless in the “real world”. i understand that it can feel like there’s a group of anonymous “woke thugs” wondering the internet trying to get people. if you feel that way it might be useful for you to try and empathize with why someone would feel that way.

ethbr0 5y ago

It is. Afaict, protected classes and characteristics as of 2021 are: Sex, race, color, religion, national origin, pregnancy and childbirth (and related medical conditions), age (including mandatory retirement), disability (including requiring reasonable accommodation), black lung disease (mine operators), bankruptcy and bad debt, citizenship status, & genetic information. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Employment_discrimination_law_in_the_United_States#History_of_federal_laws https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Employment_discrimination_la...

ghaff 5y ago
>citizenship status It's a little more complicated. The person needs to have the legal right to work in the country of course. And, if there are any legal restrictions related to e.g. Federal contracts such as defense contractors often have, a job may be restricted to US citizens.
- ummonk 5y ago
  "e.g. Federal contracts such as defense contractors often have, a job may be restricted to US citizens." While true, that seems like a rare occurrence. Most jobs I've seen just require US Persons (e.g. to work on space / defense technology) which includes permanent residents.