Here’s a Monday-morning case from Pennsylvania which is bound to engender a nice little debate.

According to Law360, it seems that a female spa worker whose training to perform Brazilian waxes included practicing it on female co-workers and having it practiced on her refused to permit it to be done to her “because it is often an extremely painful experience,” and because it is “humiliating, painful, embarrassing and discriminatory.”   Yet she was being groomed to perform this very procedure on customers, likely most of whom would be female.

After being fired on the spot when she protested, she sued last week under Title VII alleging sex discrimination because the spa did not require male employees to receive such waxes. 

Does her case have merit?   Was there a bona fide, legitimate business purpose for this spa policy which differentiated between the genders?

All-in-all an interesting case to start the holiday week.

See Finley v. Western Penn Waxing LLC, 2:13-cv-00909, U.S. District Court for the Western District of Pennsylvania