Sometimes the Mises Institute daily article comes as a surprise. Yesterday was one of those days. Check out this article below:

The Right to Work at Hooters?

Daily Article by
Ninos P. Malek
Posted on 2/9/2009 12:00:00 AM

“He wants to serve food and earn tips and why can’t he?”

So argues Martin A. Shellist, attorney for Nikolai Grushevski, a
citizen of Corpus Christi, Texas, who filed a gender-discrimination
lawsuit after Hooters denied him a job as a server at the chain
 restaurant.

A similar case in 1997 resulted in Hooters paying out a $3.75
million settlement to reconcile the matter. Title VII of the Civil
Rights Act of 1964 prohibits discrimination based on race, color,
religion, sex, or national origin. The case of Grushevski challenges
whether or not it is a bona fide occupational qualification
for one to be female in order to work as a food server; if so, then it
is legally permissible for Hooters to discriminate against males.

Read the rest of the article…

This brings up an interesting discussion. In the US it is still legal for certain institutions and companies to discriminate in certain ways. It is legal to discriminate based on age, experience, intelligence, athletic ability, etc. depending on the situation.

For example, colleges and universities can discriminate based on intelligence and sports teams can discriminate based on athletic ability. If Hooters only hires women for servers I’m not sure how it’s different from either of those situations. Customers go to Hooters expecting to find female servers — it’s their business model.

Likewise, sports fans go to professional sports games hoping to watch games with intense competition. Universities and colleges have a reputation to maintain, and they want to make sure those who are admitted will actually graduate.

Unfortunately, the desires of the customer base and owner are often not balanced against the one being “discriminated” against. Once this has been done it becomes apparent that the business owner also has a lot more to lose. Also, the business owner is closer to the operation of the business than some judges in a courtroom, who cannot understand the impact of their decisions.