Legal Question in Employment Law in Tennessee

Re: Gender-Specific Workplace Guidelines

Your posting reveals part of the information needed to advise your friend as to whether or not any of his rights have been violated. Generally, it is against the law for an employer to impose certain qualifications or standards upon one class of employees without imposing that same standard upon all classes. Thus, an employer may not require males to have a short hair cut, while allowing similarly situated females to have longer hair.

There are, however, several other factors which need to be considered. First is the number of employees. Unless the employer maintains a certain number of employees (the exact number varies according to whether you are claiming under state or federal law) then that employer is exempt from the requirements of most of the anti-discrimination laws. Second is the existence of any job requirements related to this specific employee. Your posting indicated that such requirements probably do not exist. Also, your friend needs to be aware of the difficulties of proving that he is similarly situated to the female employees to whom he would be compared. This is a fact-intensive analysis that looks into such factors as the identity of the supervisor, the timing of the alleged incidences of disparate treatment, and the similarity in job functions among comparators. Also, your friend needs to look for anyone within his protected category (male) who was treated better than he was. Finally, in order for your friend to have a case which is worth pursuing, he needs to have some form of economic loss. Barring this element, this case may not be worth pursuing.