> I'm actually wondering - what can you discriminate on generally in US?
In the US, it’s legal to discriminate on pretty much any basis, with the right justification. What the justification required is (which can be "none at all" for certain cases), however, depends on, besides the basis for discrimination, some combination of:
(1) Are you the federal government, a state (including any subdivision) government, or a private actor (and, in the latter case, are you acting as a contractor for the federal or a state government), and
(2) What is the function (employment, sales of goods or services, government benefits, etc.) for which you are discriminating?
If you mean, what can you discriminate on with no special justification at all, well:
(1) If you are a private actor, almost any basis which does not have an explicit legal restriction applicable to the function you are discriminating with regard to, and if the function isn't a narrow (but signficant) set of functions—the big ones being employment, housing, or a function considered a "public accommodation"—that is pretty much every basis.
(2) If you are the government actor (state or federal), almost no basis at all: while it is a low bar, pretty much every act by which the government discriminates is subject to, at a minimum, what is called the "rational basis test" (this is a consequence, essentially, of jurisprudence apply the due process clauses of the 5th and 14th Amendments and the equal protection clause of the 14th), which requires that the discrimination have a legitimate public purpose and some rational relationship to that purpose.
But to answer comprehensively is...well, a lot more complicated (and different, because of varying state law protections, in each state in some regards.)
Thank you for taking the time to answer me. So it seems like if there is a reasonable correlation with a protected class and no real relation to the job, you can still be liable.
This has come up in cases where, for example, machine learning (or even heuristics) were used to sort candidates and the algorithms were discovered to be discriminating based on things like name or zip code, which in the US correlate heavily with race and cannot be used as discriminators for that reason (the court does not turn a blind eye to the notion "Well, Your Honor, technically we weren't discriminating against race, we were discriminating against people named 'Jaqualin'...").
IIUC, precedent is that is incumbent upon the organization using machine learning to confirm that their system hasn't come up with a novel proxy for one of the protected classes and is using that proxy to violate discrimination protections.
In the US, it’s legal to discriminate on pretty much any basis, with the right justification. What the justification required is (which can be "none at all" for certain cases), however, depends on, besides the basis for discrimination, some combination of:
(1) Are you the federal government, a state (including any subdivision) government, or a private actor (and, in the latter case, are you acting as a contractor for the federal or a state government), and
(2) What is the function (employment, sales of goods or services, government benefits, etc.) for which you are discriminating?
If you mean, what can you discriminate on with no special justification at all, well:
(1) If you are a private actor, almost any basis which does not have an explicit legal restriction applicable to the function you are discriminating with regard to, and if the function isn't a narrow (but signficant) set of functions—the big ones being employment, housing, or a function considered a "public accommodation"—that is pretty much every basis.
(2) If you are the government actor (state or federal), almost no basis at all: while it is a low bar, pretty much every act by which the government discriminates is subject to, at a minimum, what is called the "rational basis test" (this is a consequence, essentially, of jurisprudence apply the due process clauses of the 5th and 14th Amendments and the equal protection clause of the 14th), which requires that the discrimination have a legitimate public purpose and some rational relationship to that purpose.
But to answer comprehensively is...well, a lot more complicated (and different, because of varying state law protections, in each state in some regards.)