In Lewis v. Heartland Inns, an Iowa hotel chain allegedly fired a front desk employee because the company’s director of operations thought she didn’t have a “Midwestern girl look” and that the employee appeared too masculine for the job. Recently the 8th Circuit ruled the employee had a viable Title VII claim for gender stereotype discrimination.
Dennis Brown, managing shareholder of Littler Mendelson’s San Jose, Calif., office, and Marcia McCormick, associate professor at St. Louis University School of Law and co-editor of the Workplace Prof Law Blog, have some advice to help in-house counsel avoid this sort of debacle.
