In today’s day and age, discrimination is a hypersensitive topic in general. Appreciatively, there are laws defined to help control discrimination and give all applicants equal opportunities to be considered for the job they are applying. Additionally, those same laws apply once a company employs an applicant such as the case of Smith and Convery versus Hooters of Americas, Inc.
Let’s face it, Hooters of Americas, Inc. is not known for their business of serving up five- star delectable food. The ‘hooter girl’ strategy is a society driven image of the perfect woman, to attract their customer base of men wanting to hang out, eat some mediocre food and watch football. They have tried to sell it on a family friendly environment to avoid being categorized as sex focused. However, the “Hooter’s Girl” is just that, a girl. In attempts to avoid sex discrimination, their website
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This suggests that they have specific gender roles for their company. By having Smith and Convery sign arbitration documents during their on-boarding clearly exhibits Hooters’ awareness of the fine line they walk in conceivably offending someone based on sex or physical appearance. However, Hooters must be more proactive and be forthcoming with the information during the application stage and give applicants time to review it.
Both sides of the case have valid arguments. Regarding the discrimination in the case, yes, there is agreement for both plaintiffs in their case against Hooters. Due to laws established within the state of Michigan there is no recourse for Hooters. The women are protected under the “Elliot Larsen Civil Rights Act, which bans discrimination based dimensions of weight, age or height” (Daly, 2010). This was the only grounds for ruling discrimination in the case. However, under the United States Equal Employment Opportunity Commission’s (EEOC) anti-discrimination law does not include discernment about physical appearance, weight,