Opinion ID: 3036946
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: sex stereotyping

Text: In Price Waterhouse, the Supreme Court considered a mixed-motive discrimination case. 490 U.S. 228 (1989). There, the plaintiff, Ann Hopkins, was denied partnership in the national accounting firm of Price Waterhouse because some of the partners found her to be too aggressive. Id. at 234-36. While some partners praised Hopkins’s “ ‘strong character, independence and integrity[,]’ ” others commented that she needed to take “ ‘a course at charm school[.]’ ” Id. at 4130 JESPERSEN v. HARRAH’S OPERATING CO. 234-35. The Supreme Court determined that once a plaintiff has established that gender played “a motivating part in an employment decision, the defendant may avoid a finding of liability only by proving by a preponderance of the evidence that it would have made the same decision even if it had not taken the plaintiff’s gender into account.” Id. at 258. [8] Consequently, in establishing that “gender played a motivating part in an employment decision,” a plaintiff in a Title VII case may introduce evidence that the employment decision was made in part because of a sex stereotype. Id. at 250-51. According to the Court, this is because “we are beyond the day when an employer could evaluate employees by assuming or insisting that they matched the stereotype associated with their group, for ‘in forbidding employers to discriminate against individuals because of their sex, Congress intended to strike at the entire spectrum of disparate treatment of men and women resulting from sex stereotypes.’ ” Id. at 251 (quoting Los Angeles Dept. of Water & Power v. Manhart, 435 U.S. 702, 707 n.13 (1978) (alteration omitted)). It was therefore impermissible for Hopkins’s employer to place her in an untenable Catch-22: she needed to be aggressive and masculine to excel at her job, but was denied partnership for doing so because of her employer’s gender stereotype. Instead, Hopkins was advised to “ ‘walk more femininely, talk more femininely, dress more femininely, wear make up, have her hair styled, and wear jewelry.’ ” Id. at 235. The stereotyping in Price Waterhouse interfered with Hopkins’ ability to perform her work; the advice that she should take “a course at charm school” was intended to discourage her use of the forceful and aggressive techniques that made her successful in the first place. Id. at 251. Impermissible sex stereotyping was clear because the very traits that she was asked to hide were the same traits considered praiseworthy in men. JESPERSEN v. HARRAH’S OPERATING CO. 4131 [9] Harrah’s “Personal Best” policy is very different. The policy does not single out Jespersen. It applies to all of the bartenders, male and female. It requires all of the bartenders to wear exactly the same uniforms while interacting with the public in the context of the entertainment industry. It is for the most part unisex, from the black tie to the non-skid shoes. There is no evidence in this record to indicate that the policy was adopted to make women bartenders conform to a commonly-accepted stereotypical image of what women should wear. The record contains nothing to suggest the grooming standards would objectively inhibit a woman’s ability to do the job. The only evidence in the record to support the stereotyping claim is Jespersen’s own subjective reaction to the makeup requirement.