Wilson Case

In Wilson v. Southwest Airlines Company, a male decided to sue the airline after he was passed over as a flight attendant based on the fact that he was a male. Southwest argued that allowing only females to be flight attendants was a Bona fide occupational qualification (BFOQ). The airline claimed that its female-only hiring policy was crucial to being financially successful. The court rejected Southwest's financial argument based on the fact that it is not the company's sole intended purpose. Southwest's purpose is to transport customers from one location to another. Flight attendants are there to assist passengers so that they have a comfortable flight.

BFOQ is considered to be legalized discrimination, only on rare occasions, when the employer can prove that the ground for choosing one group over another goes to the essence of what the employer is in business to do (Bennett-Alexander & Hartman, 2012, p. 65). This case gave rise to the BFOQ test. If the answers to the two question test are "yes", then the company has a BFOQ. The first part of the test asks if the position in question needs to have the employee be only one gender. If the answer is "yes", then the second part of the tests asks if the "requirement is reasonably necessary to the 'essence' of the employer's business (Bennett-Alexander & Hartman, 2012, p. 93). The standards of BFOQs are not strict at all. Many companies out there focus their marketing campaigns on the whole "sex sells" concept that they forget about what may constitute as discrimination under Title VII. These standards need to be set in place so that companies are kept in line.

If the public likes the employer's marketing scheme, Southwest could incorporate attractive men into their ads to appeal to the female audience. Southwest claimed that the attractive females led to their financial success. Just imagine how much more successful they could have been by adding attractive males to the scheme. A female would definitely purchase a ticket to fly Southwest if she thought that she would be pampered by an attractive male flight attendant. It is the same reason women read romance novels.

Commercial success of a company should not have more weight in the courtroom for any company no matter how important. One of the only times a court should allow a BFOQ would be cases in which the company had a firm reason to only hire one gender. For example, Bennett-Alexander & Hartmen (2012) use the Playboy Clubs as a good example as to why only hiring females serves more of a purpose to what the business does and not for financial gain. As long as the BFOQ test is in place, each case should be treated differently.