Fired for Being Too Attractive

[niener]

The Iowa Supreme Court ruled in favor of a man who fired an employee because he found her to be too attractive....

I'm sure there's another side to this debate (hence the reason I put this in the debate forum) but I just can't figure out how they came to this ruling. She didn't flirt with him, she didn't encourage him, and though he claimed her clothes were too tight she wasn't fired for breaking the dress code. She was fired because his wife felt she was a threat to their marriage.

Link to full story: http://www.cnn.com/2012/12/21/justic...html?hpt=hp_t1

Any thoughts about this? I'm just... confused

ETA: Here's the link to the actual ruling: http://i2.cdn.turner.com/cnn/2012/im....pdf?hpt=hp_t1

[MarissaNicole]

You can fire someone for any reason other than a discriminary one.

Ex: you can fire someone because they like a different sports team, you dont like how they smell or because they are blonde....but you cant fire someone because of their age, race, gender because those classifications would be discriminatory.

So it seems consistent that you should be able to fire someone as a threat to your marriage.

Wife to PGY3

[GrayMatterWife]

As long as it is an at-will relationship and your reason for firing does not violate applicable state or federal law (such as a recognized illegal discriminatory basis, such as race), you can fire someone for whatever good, bad, or nonexistent basis you'd like. You can fire them for being pretty, ugly, thin, too muscular, whatever. But you also have to deal with the fallout of those decisions. If you surround yourself with only ugly or slovenly or pock-marked or whatever employees and you provide a lot of face-to-face customer service, you will probably lose business (regardless of whether it is "fair" or not to judge a product based on the physical appearance of the customer service or sales provider). So, fire the ugly at your own business risk.

[Rapunzel]

On a feminist FB group I belong to there is an attorney (female) who claims the fired employee did flirt back with the boss - via texts.

[Rapunzel]

Same source claims the boss only hires female employees.