crimresearch said:
It doesn't have to be relevant...it only has to be the employer's whim, which, as you mention, is the employer's right.
I didn't argue that it was on a whim. I argued against that position.
And no, we do not routinely make exceptions to the right of someone to exercise their whims on their own private property, it has to be proven in court that there is a compelling reason to strip someone of their rights.
In the case of race and employment, the courts used tests, including past harm.
In the case of women, the courts balanced competing rights.
So you are saying in order for someone's rights to be violated there has to be a legal test that shows there is just cause for violating the right?
This thread has been going on since January...
On this board full of legal experts, will someone please show me the links to a relevant case where the rights of employees to be fat, or smelly, or to smoke, were given that sort of protected status?
I think you are contradicting yourself in this paragraph. Above you argued that rights couldn't be violated unless legal tests determined it was acceptable, in other words due process had been followed. Here you appear to argue the opposite, that rights can be violated unless a legal test has been applied and shows why the individual may retain the right.
Because last I checked, the courts had been unsympathetic to the arguments being presented here.
In the early days of racial, gender and sexual orientation discrimination the courts weren't on the right side either. Again, people have the right to privacy as it concerns what they do on their own time with their bodies. I do believe the courts have upheld this view. The exception has been illegal drug use. Tobacco is legal.
Whence comes the right to search an employee for evidence of engaging in
legal activity in order to make an employment decision?
Again, let's require homosexual males to strip and spread their butt cheeks while we are invading other employee's privacy. So as to not be discriminatory against gays we could just have employers require all men to bend over. Anal sex is a high risk activity and could cost the company lost productivity, lost training dollars, pre retirement death of the employee and all sorts of other really awful things.
The employer has as much right to know if you put cigarettes in your mouth as they do to know if you take dick up your butt.
For the record, an employer prohibitting anal sex isn't prohibitting anyone from being gay, it is just prohibitting an activity known to be more dangerous than other activities. And besides, it is a voluntary contract right? Employers should have this right.
Face it, we aren't a very tolerant culture, we just change the group we are intolerant of from time to time. Presently the zeitgeist is that it is acceptable and even fashionable to be intolerant of smokers, even when they limit their smoking to their private time, in their own home.
That is intolerant to an extreme.
