Patient/customer privacy rights clash with equal employment opportunities.

Hiring decisions may never be related to the employer's perception of the ability responsibility. The employer must prove that it had a factual basis for believing that the hiring of members of one sex would directly undermine the essence of the job involved or the employer's business. In addition, it must be shown that the employer would be unable to assign job responsibilities in a way that would insure a minimal clash between the privacy interests of customers and the nondiscriminatory principles of Title VII. Employers must treat employees equally and on an individual basis. Furthermore, the reason for the hiring and/or rejection of any employee must rest solely upon the fact that the employee cannot do the job. The pattern that developed in researching the privacy cases is that the federal courts rate the BFOQ as an extremely narrow exception to the general prohibition of discrimination on the basis of sex. Unless the employer can convincingly prove that the job can be performed only by members of one sex, the BFOQ exception will fail. It can also be noted that the courts tend to allow the BFOQ defense to stand in patient privacy cases more often than in cases involving customer or inmate privacy.