Is Ugliness a Protected Class?

A lot of employers have international operations and are located in several countries. American employees being the creative folks they are, particularly when it comes to the Internet, let’s say they set up a website in the U.S. to identify the best-looking and worst-looking employees based on country of residence.

They post photos and profiles of employees from different countries, and employees of the opposite sex from around the world vote within 48 hours. Over time, it’s determined that Britons are the ugliest people in the company and in the world.

That’s actually what a dating website called BeautifulPeople.com does. After seven years, starting in Denmark and finally going global, the website has found that both male and female Brits are the ugliest. Swedish men and Norwegian women are the best-looking.

A dating website can get away with this, although it might make the citizens of a few countries angry. Can an employer get away with it? Is ugliness a protected class, like race, color, gender, national origin, religion, age, and disability?

Ugliness isn’t a protected class. But should an employer let its employees set up this kind of website? It might seem harmless enough to the beautiful people, but it just might serve as the basis for a national origin discrimination claim. It would be an interesting dispute, but I doubt that any employer would want to be the test case.

1. 

   E. says:

   November 17, 2009 at 3:01 pm

   I sure hope ugliness is a protected class. E.
2. 

   John Phillips says:

   November 17, 2009 at 4:59 pm

   Now, E, you know better.

   John