Anti-feminist litigant Roy Den Hollander had claimed that Columbia University violated the law by offering courses in the study of one gender but not the other. A judge disagreed. [Corey Kilgannon, NY Times City Room via Elefant] Hollander has made earlier appearances at this site through his lawsuits against “Ladies’ Night” discounts at drinking establishments.
Posts Tagged ‘sex discrimination’
Hooters wouldn’t hire him as waiter
And so Nicolai Grushevski of Corpus Christi, Texas is off to court with a class action suit against restaurant chain Hooters of America, known for its buxom serving staff (complaint, PDF, courtesy CourthouseNews.com). Legal pressure on the winks-and-wings purveyor to hire male waitstaff is nothing new: see this post and this one on the long crusade to that effect by the federal Equal Employment Opportunity Commission.
November 23 roundup
- In unpublished opinion, California appeals court upholds dismissal of Unruh Act challenge to baseball Angels’ Mothers Day tote giveaway [Lex Icon, earlier]. More: CalBizLit.
- Securities class-action firm Bernstein, Liebhard & Lifshitz perhaps a less credible tribune of fiscal rectitude now that name partner Mel Lifshitz has copped felony plea to lying on federal taxes [NY Post, NYLJ, WSJ law blog] And what’s this about Lifshitz funding one of his firm’s clients? [The Street] P.S. He’s now departed the Bernstein firm, but maybe there’s an opening for him as chairman of House Ways and Means.
- Per one lawyer, “would be a stretch” for website operator to be held liable for teen’s overdose suicide with webcam running [AP]
- Carter Wood finishes up weeklong series of posts looking back on the great 1998 tobacco settlement [ShopFloor links to PoL]
- Eric Holder not a reassuring Attorney General choice for gun rights [Kopel @ Volokh]
- Law bloggers on Twitter: Anne Reed explains what the fuss is about [Deliberations; related, Michelle Golden]
- Compulsory chapel? UC Irvine Prof. Alexander McPherson, who quit supervising students rather than submit to state-mandated sexual harassment training, explains his stand [L.A. Times] Lefty blogs once again empty a bucket over his head [Feministe, Lemieux]
- Presumably unrelated: “Law Grad Accused of Faking E-Mail to Implicate Prof in Harassment” [ABA Journal, Florida Coastal]
“…a class of disappointed males”
John Stossel revisits two of the high points in EEOC history, its crusades against sex imbalances in the Hooters restaurant waitstaff and Sears hardware departments (“When sexism claims are a real hoot”, syndicated/TownHall, Jun. 28).
The question of unisex bathrooms
Blogger Amber points to the tale of a transsexual survivor of Katrina being arrested for using the woman’s room and asks “Why not have unisex bathrooms?” One obvious reason is that, in commercial establishments at least, unisex restrooms present a stronger risk of alienating customers with a preference for the single-sex model than vice versa. Still, social mores have changed in some places, and the architecture hasn’t caught up.
Here, I suspect there are liability-related reasons. The first innovator to create a unisex bathroom and be unfortunate enough to be the scene of a sexual assault in the bathroom is going to be sued for not conforming to the standard practice. So there’s a collective action problem even to the extent that institutions wish to create unisex restrooms. (The uber-trendy bar and restaurant Mie N Yu in Georgetown has a unisex bathroom, but they have a full-time attendant.)