Saturday, March 24, 2007

Discrimination or loss of confidence?

This morning I found a story about a public official who recently lost his job. What's of particular interest in this story is the fact that this individual lost his job after it was discovered he was planning to undergo a sex change. The official, Steve Stanton, was fired because other employees that work alongside Stanton "lost confidence in him". Although it appears as though the discovery of the Stanton's sex change may not have been the reason that he was fired, it is possible that others who work with Stanton did lose confidence in him. It might seem discriminatory to fire someone because of their sexual orientation, but what if the prejudices of others truly causes them to lose confidence in that individual? Is such a situation a form of discrimination or were the other officials following their civic duty by removing someone that they didn't believe was fit for a leadership position? Is such a situation different from learning that an individual is a Purdue fan? For instance, if Elmer Fudd announced that he supported Purdue while he worked as a representative of Bloomington, would city officials be justified in firing him because they lost confidence in him?

It's important to point out that Stanton's contract allowed for him to be fired without cause. However, I still think it's important to determine as to whether or not the actions of the city officials that fired Stanton serve as a form of discrimination.
http://www.cnn.com/2007/US/03/24/sexchange.firing.ap/index.html

1 Comments:

Blogger Vaughn Ganiyu said...

I agree with Max that it is important to find out the intentions of the city officials for firing Stanton. After reading the article, it seems that officials' prejudices might have been an issue in this case because prior to his firing Stanton was given a pay raise the previous year for his management of the $130 million city budget. The claim that they have suddenly lost confidence in his working ability at approximately the same time he revealed publicly about his sex change decision seems circumspect. Of course, proving that prejudice and discriminatory behavior led to the ultimate decision to fire Stanton will be hard to prove, given that his contract was under employment-at-will.

12:55 PM  

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