<story><title>U.S. Supreme Court endorses gay, transgender worker protections</title><url>https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-court-lgbt-idUSKBN23M20N</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>tejohnso</author><text>&amp;gt;race, color, religion, sex, nationality&lt;p&gt;Wouldn&amp;#x27;t it be more effective for the law to say that any discrimination that doesn&amp;#x27;t affect a person&amp;#x27;s ability to perform the job is not allowed?&lt;p&gt;When you start itemizing specific traits it&amp;#x27;s a never-ending list. For example, the list quoted doesn&amp;#x27;t include eye color or hair color, or spoken language dialect, or ...</text></item><item><author>hvs</author><text>Here&amp;#x27;s the decision: &lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.supremecourt.gov&amp;#x2F;opinions&amp;#x2F;19pdf&amp;#x2F;17-1618_hfci.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.supremecourt.gov&amp;#x2F;opinions&amp;#x2F;19pdf&amp;#x2F;17-1618_hfci.pdf&lt;/a&gt;&lt;p&gt;The dissenters basically believe that  “race, color, religion, sex, or national origin.” doesn&amp;#x27;t include &amp;quot;sexual orientation&amp;quot; or &amp;quot;gender identity&amp;quot; so legislation would need to be passed to change that.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>chadash</author><text>That&amp;#x27;s not the intention of these laws though. The basic presumption is &amp;quot;it&amp;#x27;s a free country, so people should be able to discriminate for whatever reason they want&amp;quot;. However, when there&amp;#x27;s an overwhelming need for it, we will make carve-outs for specific situations. In particular things that people really can&amp;#x27;t change (race, nationality, sex) or that we deem as a society that they shouldn&amp;#x27;t &lt;i&gt;have&lt;/i&gt; to change (religion).&lt;p&gt;For anything that doesn&amp;#x27;t fall under these categories, it&amp;#x27;s fair game to discriminate. You don&amp;#x27;t like vegetarians or people who play tennis? You can discriminate. You&amp;#x27;re might be a f&lt;i&gt;&lt;/i&gt;&lt;i&gt;&lt;/i&gt;* moron for doing so, but we don&amp;#x27;t have laws against that.</text></comment>
<story><title>U.S. Supreme Court endorses gay, transgender worker protections</title><url>https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-court-lgbt-idUSKBN23M20N</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>tejohnso</author><text>&amp;gt;race, color, religion, sex, nationality&lt;p&gt;Wouldn&amp;#x27;t it be more effective for the law to say that any discrimination that doesn&amp;#x27;t affect a person&amp;#x27;s ability to perform the job is not allowed?&lt;p&gt;When you start itemizing specific traits it&amp;#x27;s a never-ending list. For example, the list quoted doesn&amp;#x27;t include eye color or hair color, or spoken language dialect, or ...</text></item><item><author>hvs</author><text>Here&amp;#x27;s the decision: &lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.supremecourt.gov&amp;#x2F;opinions&amp;#x2F;19pdf&amp;#x2F;17-1618_hfci.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.supremecourt.gov&amp;#x2F;opinions&amp;#x2F;19pdf&amp;#x2F;17-1618_hfci.pdf&lt;/a&gt;&lt;p&gt;The dissenters basically believe that  “race, color, religion, sex, or national origin.” doesn&amp;#x27;t include &amp;quot;sexual orientation&amp;quot; or &amp;quot;gender identity&amp;quot; so legislation would need to be passed to change that.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>mulmen</author><text>The problem with that is how easy it is to construct an argument that something like race is an impediment to work because of the biases of coworkers or customers.&lt;p&gt;Are blue eyed people being discriminated against?  If the answer is no then your hypothetical is irrelevant and you are optimizing for the wrong case.&lt;p&gt;These are protected classes to correct a &lt;i&gt;real&lt;/i&gt; failing of our social system.</text></comment>