Big Ten Fitness Case Study

1527 Words7 Pages

While Susan Reed is considering taking legal action, she must consider the various angles she may take when going after her employer, Big Ten Fitness. There are three major avenues that she should consider when bringing a lawsuit against them. They include discrimination based on sex, discrimination based on age, and sexual harassment. None of these will guarantee that she wins the case, but one may be easier to prove than the others. To begin, Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 states that an employer cannot discriminate based on any of 5 protected classes, one of which is sex. Therefore, because Big Ten Fitness has more than 15 people employed by them, they are subject to compliance with Title VII. According to the McDonnell Douglas test, a legally sufficient case of discrimination means that the person is a member of a protected class, the person applied for a job for which he or she was qualified, the person was rejected even though they were qualified, and the employer continued to seek applications with similar qualifications after the person was rejected. As far as the case says, Susan would be unable to meet all the qualifications …show more content…

As mentioned previously, the cases of discrimination based on age and sex would be difficult to prove when considering the McDonnell Douglas test. If she could prove that they continued to seek applications after she was denied, then the chances would be much better for Susan. Considering that situation as unlikely, it can be assumed that a sexual harassment case would allow Susan to fight Big Ten Fitness more strongly if they have not done their due diligence as far as protecting their employees from harassment. She could claim that a hostile work environment was created. Big Ten Fitness would have less ways to defend themselves if she made this claim and they had not provided sufficient opportunities to report