Hacker News Reader

Comment by tptacek | Hacker News Reader

An important distinction to make here is that pregnant women are effectively a protected class. Your wife wasn't able to file suit because the company had been shady; she was able to file suit because the company violated employment law. Here it's not so clear what recourse your friend might have.

View on HN

You mention "protected class". Would really appreciate some details.

In most parts of the US, we have "at will" employment, which means it's legal to fire someone for almost any reason. You can fire someone because you don't like their hair, or because they drive a Ford and you like Toyota, or for any other stupid reason you can think of, with only a few exceptions.

The exceptions are called "protected classes". It's illegal to fire someone for their race, gender, religion, sexual orientation (in some states), pregnancy, or age.

or illness.

In the US, there are laws specifically protecting people from being fired from jobs for certain reasons.

These almost universally include race, sex, sexual orientation, age, disability, becoming pregnant, being required to participate in a mandatory action like jury duty, and I think being recalled to the military if you are on inactive status.

If an employer violates these, the ex-employee has grounds to sue.

Sexual orientation is not universally a protected class. I don't know about non-US employment law, but at least in the US, I believe it is on a state-by-state basis.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Protected_class people have not mentioned: disability (if an ADA qualified disability, such as delayed sleep phase disorder,) genetic information, age (if over 40,) family status (having kids, etc,) veteran status.

I found it disquieting that DSPS was recognized by the ADA (meaning that one can't "discriminate" against an employee that refuses to show up during core office hours if they can convince a doctor to "diagnose" their sleeping habits as DSPS). But then I did some minimal research and found that you can in fact fire someone for refusing to show up at 10AM (or whatnot); you just have to be consistent about enforcing that rule with everyone.

And so we have another reason that companies might need to adopt fascist office hours: not doing so might get them sued.

(I strongly believe in the idea of the ADA and am not suggesting that the proverbial baby be thrown out with the &c &c).

Reply on news.ycombinator.com