That is quite fascinating to me (as a layperson and non-american). Are there any articles or is there any literature that you'd advise in that topic?
I'd be interested in something that gives more context, details and examples than the wikipedia article, but not targeted at lawyers and not excessively long.
How does that work in practice for a company like Hooters - do they spend millions on lawyers to be able to defend their position? What if you'd open a local place working in similar way to Hooters - would you go bankrupt trying to defend yourself?
> How does that work in practice for a company like Hooters - do they spend millions on lawyers to be able to defend their position?
They certainly spend millions on lawyers. They've been sued for not hiring men several times, AFAIK always settle out of court. They defend their position by claiming being a woman is a BFOQ for working at Hooters, but aren't eager to risk losing in court.
They have certainly been sued many times, but I could only find two suits related to not hiring men. The older one resulted in a large settlement and an agreement to hire regardless of sex for non-waitress positions (including bartender and host/hostess). The latter was against a single franchise and had non-disclosed settlement terms (I'm not sure how a class-action suit can have a confidential settlement; wouldn't all members of the class be notified?).
I don't know of any good resources, but application of the laws is mostly common-sense, with a slight bias towards non-discrimination in the gray areas.
It doesn't take a lawyer to tell that Hooters' primary product isn't chicken wings (Chris Rock even made a joke about it).
The reason behind the laws isn't common-sense, in the case that the 1964 Civil Rights Act is basically a list of "things currently happening that we think are bad" rather than an exhaustive list of things it's bad to discriminate on; it's also limited somewhat by the legal framework that the US congress was working within.
Labour laws in the US are also weird for similar reasons. There was a point at which union members were beaten and killed, with the local police being bought-off to not intervene. It escalated to at least one pitched battle between a private army and workers. Things like assault, battery, and murder are enforced at the local ("state" in the US terminology, not in the meaning everywhere else in the world) level not federal level, so rather than arresting the people doing this, laws were passed giving special protections to unions. Then a few decades later people argued that the special protections made unions too powerful and a bunch of extra rules limiting what unions can do were passed.
I'd be interested in something that gives more context, details and examples than the wikipedia article, but not targeted at lawyers and not excessively long.
How does that work in practice for a company like Hooters - do they spend millions on lawyers to be able to defend their position? What if you'd open a local place working in similar way to Hooters - would you go bankrupt trying to defend yourself?