Did you see this headline? “Dental assistant fired for being ‘irresistible’ to boss”
When I first heard it, I thought it must be from The Onion or some other satirical news outlet, because it just seemed to ridiculous. I didn’t actually hear the report until the evening on ABC News when I learned the incident had not only occurred, but the Iowa Supreme Court had upheld the right of the dentist to do so. Ryan Foley, reporting from Iowa city in an Associated Press article wrote:
December 24, 2012 (WPVI) — A dentist acted legally when he fired an assistant that he found attractive simply because he and his wife viewed the woman as a threat to their marriage, the all-male Iowa Supreme Court ruled Friday.
The court ruled 7-0 that bosses can fire employees they see as an “irresistible attraction,” even if the employees have not engaged in flirtatious behavior or otherwise done anything wrong. Such firings may be unfair, but they are not unlawful discrimination under the Iowa Civil Rights Act because they are motivated by feelings and emotions, not gender, Justice Edward Mansfield wrote.
An attorney for Fort Dodge dentist James Knight said the decision, the first of its kind in Iowa, is a victory for family values because Knight fired Melissa Nelson in the interest of saving his marriage, not because she was a woman.
I don’t even know where to begin questioning the absurdity of the ruling.
Who would ever think that I’d be concerned about discrimination against sexy people, but let’s go ahead and take this ruling to it’s absurd but according to Iowa’s Supreme Court, legally justifiable conclusion. If you are sexually attractive and you work in a place where your boss feels he may have libido control issues, you may want to start sending out your resume! I’m not sure where it’s safe to apply, though. Perhaps as a model? or the entertainment industry? If you have talent, that is.
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By the way, this decision by an all male panel of judges does seem to be based on some rather antiquated ideas of the role of women in society, and if it sets precedent it is more likely to harm the position of working women than men. But before those of us born with a Y chromosome breathe too much of a sigh of relief that that little piece of genetic material has proven so handy yet again, note the language. Justice Mansfield takes care to clarify that an employee can be fired because of what the employer sees as an “irresistible attraction,” regardless of actual behavior.
So guys, if your boss is a woman, or perhaps an openly gay man in a state that allows same-sex marriage, perhaps you could fall afoul of this too! Suddenly my mind is running off on a whole list of what-ifs.
What if the dental assistant had been a lesbian, could the same case have been made? The question behind that is what degree of interest or possibility of a sexual encounter has to exist on behalf of the dental assistant before what might ordinarily be seen as sexual harassment from her boss becomes grounds for her to be fired!
What’s to prevent this reason from being used to circumvent due process in employee termination? If an employer has an axe to grind, a good way to circumvent normal procedures of documenting poor performance or other just cause before terminating a job might simply be to claim an inability to control one’s desire for them.
What are the limits, anyway? Does a person have to be sexy overall, or just appealing in some way? Maybe if you want to get rid of Julie in accounting who’s quite average overall, you can claim her long fingers are irresistible, and long fingers are your fetish. Therefore Julie’s long fingers are a threat to your marriage and you have to let her go!
It’s absurd! Judges in Iowa have affirmed that employees may have to sacrifice jobs to save the marriage of their employer. Is that some kind of weird “family values” logic? Because that marriage is probably doomed anyway, and employees should not be deprived of their livelihoods to save it!