International Union, United Automobile, Aerospace & Agricultural Implement Workers v. Johnson Controls, Inc.

Whether employers should restrain adults from engaging in acts hazardous to their children is an ethical, medical, economic, and political problem of great complexity. But this is a statutory case, and we must implement the law rather than give our own answer. Johnson’s policy is sex discrimination, forbidden unless sex is a “bona fide occupational qualification”— which it is not.

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Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 forbids employers “to discriminate against any individual ... because of such individual’s ... sex”, 42 U.S.C. § 2000e-2(a)(l), unless sex is a “bona fide occupational…