Gender Discrimination at Hooters

A man in Texas has filed a lawsuit against the restaurant chain Hooters for not hiring him because of his gender. He says that he was not hired because the job as a server is reserved for women by an employer who only wants to exploit their sexuality for business. The vice-president of Hooters made this comment regarding the situation, "If we lose this go around, you can next expect hairy-legged guys in the Rockettes to line up and male models in the Sports Illustrated swimsuit issue." He's got a point. Hooters relies on women to get business. People go to Hooters expecting to get an attractive female server and if some man showed up it would hurt the image of the restaurant. Also, Hooters has an agreement in which Hooters agreed to create jobs for men limited to kitchen staff, bartender and manager, but the job of server is to be reserved for women. Under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 there is to be no employment discrimination on the basis of race, religion, sex, color or national origin. However, there is something called a bona-fide occupational qualification defense, BFOQ for short, which allows discrimination in certain situations. Discrimination is permissible if a certain class (women in this case) is necessary to have operations run normally. A good example of this is having airline pilots retire when they reach a certain age. So if Hooters can prove that having women only servers is necessary to normal operations of their business, which shouldn't be very hard, then this man's case will have no chance. This man knew that he wouldn't get the job as a server and did this just for the money. But was he proving a good point? I don't think so. This business relies on women servers to get business and most people know that and by not hiring men, they are not discriminating because a male server would put a damper on this business which highly advertises good looking women as your server.