(1) The Commission will note that the following situations do not justify the application of the bona fide professional qualifications exception: bona fide professional qualifications are also included in other federal legislation. The Age Discrimination in Employment Act (ADEA) was enacted to prevent age discrimination in the workplace. ADEA contains a bona fide exemption from professional qualifications, and ADEA also requires that age discrimination be “reasonably necessary for the normal operation of the business concerned.” The District Court ruled on the case in Rawlinson`s favor. The U.S. Supreme Court upheld the District Court`s finding that the legal height and weight requirements violated Title VII, but overturned the lower court`s rejection of the BFOQ defense. Although the Supreme Court held that the BFOQ exception was intended to be an extremely narrow exception to the general prohibition of discrimination on the basis of sex, the Court concluded that Regulation 204 fell within this narrow exception because of the particular factual circumstances of the case. The Ontario Human Rights Commission (OHRC) has published guidelines for setting employment requirements. Employers need to understand whether the rule or standard adopted is rationally related to the job for which they are hiring. A rule or standard must be adopted to serve a legitimate work-related purpose.
A standard is not considered reasonably necessary unless the employer can demonstrate that it would be unreasonable to accommodate individual workers who share the applicant`s characteristics. Employers should also consider alternative approaches to meeting the requirements. The Canadian Good Faith Occupational Requirements Act was taken into account in 1985 in a Canadian court case involving an employee of the Canadian National Railways, K. S. Bhinder, a Sikh whose religion required him to wear a turban, lost his challenge to CN`s policy of requiring him to wear a safety helmet. [1] In 1990, the Supreme Court of Canada amended the Bhinder decision by ruling on another case: “An employer who has not adopted an accommodation policy and who cannot otherwise satisfy Trier that the individual placement would result in unreasonable hardship must justify its conduct towards the individual complainant. Even in this case, the employer can count on the BFOQ defence. [2] It is not unlawful for an employer, employment agency or work organization to take (1) measures that are otherwise prohibited under paragraphs (a), (b), (c) or (e) of this Section if age is a genuine occupational qualification reasonably necessary for the normal operation of the business concerned or where differentiation is based on reasonable factors other than age. or if such practices affect an employee in a workplace in a foreign country and compliance with these paragraphs would result in that employer or a business controlled by such an employer violating the laws of the country in which that workplace is located.
[4] A bona fide professional qualification (BFOQ) is a legally permissible restriction on a person`s attitude and employment based on their sex, religion or national origin. In order to be defined as legal or “bona fide”, qualifications must relate to the necessary activities of the company concerned as well as to the essential professional functions of the position. (1) The employer alleged that the male sex was a BFOQ for his job as a man changer, which, in addition to a weightlifting requirement, was based on the position`s requirement that the employee be prepared to come to work in the middle of the night in the event of an emergency. The record revealed that employees in other jobs were called after midnight in an emergency. Thus, the employer`s argument turned out to be pretextual. But even without such evidence. Title VII rejects precisely this type of romantic paternalism as too Victorian and instead gives women the power to decide whether or not to take on non-romantic tasks. Men have always had the right to determine whether the gradual increase in remuneration for arduous, dangerous, odious, boring or unromantic tasks is worth the effort.
The promise of Title VII is that women should now have equal rights. We cannot conclude that Congress intended to break this promise by including the gullible exception of professional qualification. Weeks of Southern Bell Telephone and Telegraph Company, 408 F.2d 228, 236, 1 EPD ¶9970 (5th Cir. 1969) (emphasis added). The Dothard case stemmed from the rejection of Dianne Rawlinson`s application by the Alabama Correctional Board. Rawlinson, then a 22-year-old graduate who had studied psychology in prison, had applied for a job as a correctional counselor (prison guard) and was rejected for failing to meet the minimum weight requirement of £120 set by state law (which also set a minimum height of 5 feet,2 inches). Rawlinson filed a lawsuit with the EEOC for discrimination based on sex, gained the right to sue, and then filed a class action lawsuit in federal district court challenging minimum legal requirements for height and weight, in violation of Title VII and the Fourteenth Amendment. A women`s clothing catalog could only hire female models to wear women`s clothing, and the company would have a BFOQ defense for its gender discrimination. Being a woman would be a real professional qualification of modeling work or acting job for a certain role.
(9) The respondent pursued a policy in which only women were assigned “light” jobs and only men were assigned “heavy” jobs. (The collective agreement also referred to job and wage classifications as “easy” and “difficult.”) The respondent has not shown that his “light” and “heavy” jobs segregated by sex were eligible for the exemption from the BFOQ. Outfit: Cause; “From this, we conclude that gender is not legally a real professional qualification for `easy` and `difficult` jobs.” Commission Decision No. 72-0324, Decisions of the CHRC EEOC (1973) ¶6303. (3) Determine whether the defendant employer relied in good faith on national law or whether the state defence of intellectual property rights is a pretext for discrimination. For example, determining whether the defendant has given written instructions regarding state law and whether he has a possibility that also excludes women in a state without the relevant protection law.