Legislating exceptions is worse than abolishing the antidiscrimination laws altogether.
I can see how it can be bad if it becomes widespread. A patchwork of rules about how some forms of discrimination are allowed in some places under some circumstances, but not in other places under the same circumstances, but perhaps in still other places under different circumstances would be confusing, hard to enforce fairly and generally a mess. I think if there are to be any exceptions they should be few, fairly clear and apply as broadly as possible.
But legislation being different in different situations isn't any worse then regulations, judicial decisions, or non-judicial decisions being different. In this specific case the NJ director of the state Division on Civil Rights decided that Ladies Night was illegal discrimination. In other places courts have decided this, in still other places courts have decided that it is not illegal. You get the same patchwork of different rules in different places and different situations. The director in NJ could have decided the other way, I don't see how having some higher authority overturn his decision is a gross injustice or makes the situation more complex or difficult then it is already.
The problem occurs when someone refuses to wink.
With close to 300 million people in the US, many aggressive lawyers, and an active "anti-discrimination industry". You are going to have people who refuse to wink. With other people just as concerned about stopping ridiculous and intrusive rules like not allowing ladies night those who push hard for anti-discrimination rules covering everything aren't always going to win. So you are going to get a muddled complex situation where there are exceptions and exceptions to the exceptions whether they are situational, o different rules in different jurisdictions, or different rules applying depending on which judge or group of jurors gets a case.
You can either legislate barriers to how far anti-discrimination laws will go, or you can get a more complex and uncertain situation by not legislating exceptions. Personally I find that to be just one more reason to repeal the laws (except they could be kept for public (i.e. government) institutions), but I know that is politically a non-starter.
Tim |
