Is a dress code that requires men to wear a tie but that allows women to wear sweaters, pants, pants suits, blouses, etc. discriminatory? I know that women cannot be required to wear dresses but can men be required to wear ties at the same company?

Ann Kiernan replies:

Employers have a lot of leeway in deciding what dress is appropriate for the workplace, and can have dress codes that provide different clothing, hair length or jewelry standards for men and women without running afoul of the anti-discrimination laws. So an employer can probably require men to wear ties.

In one interesting case, a computer programmer was fired because he wore Hawaiian shirts to work, instead of the business attire called for in the dress code. He sued under the Americans with Disabilities Act, claiming that, because of a prior auto accident, he could not wear a tie, and he had a doctor's note supporting his need to wear shirts that were loose around the clavicle. A federal appeals court affirmed the decision to throw out his case without trial, finding that inability to wear a tie was not a disability!

Jackson v. Analyst International Corp., 1998 U.S. App. LEXIS 1348 (10th Cir. 1998)

The legal ins and outs of dress codes, grooming requirements and more are covered in the Privacy section of our program, Managing Within the Law, Part II.