California is an “at-will” employment state, meaning that California employers generally have the right to fire their employees for any reason or for no reason at all, so long as the employer does not rely on one of the “wrong” reasons for terminating someone.  The “wrong” reasons include characteristics such as race, sex, sexual orientation, religion, national origin, age, disability or other protected characteristics.  This begs a question that many employers contemplate in different forms- can I fire an employee for being too ugly? Or too attractive?  Or too fat or thin?  Or too tall or short?  Or because I don’t like how they dress?

Firing someone for one of these reasons, in and of itself, is normally not illegal under California law.  Because being “too attractive” or “too ugly” are not protected characteristics under California law, they may be used as grounds for terminating an employee.  However, terminating someone for these types of reasons is also fraught with danger for a California employer.

For example, though it may be technically permissible to fire or refuse to hire employees who are not deemed “attractive enough” to work at your business, if this policy is only being applied to male or female prospective employees the policy may be deemed sex discrimination.

Likewise, although it may permissible to fire or refuse to hire someone because they are deemed to be overweight, obesity is protected under the Americans With Disabilities Act, meaning that you may find yourself subject to a discrimination or failure to accommodate lawsuit based on your hiring practices.  With regard to employees deemed too thin, their weight issues may be an outward reflection of a disease or protected disability.  And just as with attractiveness, applying any such policy in a manner which has a disparate impact on one sex or the other may be deemed an act of discrimination.

With regard to clothing, an employee may be terminated for wearing inappropriate clothing.  However, as with the other categories discussed above, there are exceptions to this rule that must be kept in mind.  For instance, if the clothing choices are being made as a result of a disability or in order to help an employee deal with a disability, it would be improper to terminate the employee based on such a factor.  Also, employees may wear (or refuse to wear) certain items of clothing for religious reasons.  In these situations, you may need to provide an accommodation to the employee rather than terminating him or her.  Failure to do so can lead to serious liability, including but not limited to back pay, reinstatement, and attorney’s fees and costs incurred by the employee.

The bottom line is this- if you are considering terminating an employee for anything other than a performance-related issue, you need to run the decision by your employment attorneys to make certain that you are not inadvertently setting yourself up for trouble.  Even if the issue is one of performance, there may be a perception of discrimination which should be avoided in all but the most extreme circumstances.  Do not give your disgruntled, terminated ex-employees leverage to extract a large payment from you after you have fired them.  Before making a termination decision, talk the situation over with the lawyers at Navigato & Battin.