The Law of 'Irresistible Attraction': In Iowa, If Your Boss Thinks You're Hot, You're Going to Need to Find Another Job

Employees in Iowa can now be fired if their bosses consider them to be an "irresistible attraction." Yep, and this is completely fair in the eyes of the law.

So, as many of you have heard by now, Iowa’s Supreme Court recently issued a unanimous opinion which disguises lecherous workplace behavior as a valid legal avenue to terminate employees. You see, bosses can now fire employees whom they deem to be “irresistible attractions,” regardless of whether the employee has ever engaged in flirtatious behavior. In Iowa, it’s now completely acceptable for bosses to fire employees simply for having sex organs that they, in their managerial roles, are unable to use as they see fit. Dear God, you’ve got breasts? You’re so fired. Your ass looks good in slacks? Don’t even bother going back to the office.

This seems a bit sexist, but we suppose these kinds of things do happen when your state’s highest court is a huge sausage fest. And before you start whining about how unfair and discriminatory this is, don’t even bother, because it’s not. Iowa’s Supreme Frat House has decided that this is sort of behavior is controlled by feelings and emotions, not gender. This can’t possibly be gender discrimination, because bosses that want to bone their female employees shouldn’t be expected to control their feelings and emotions.

And it doesn’t matter if that same boss wouldn’t feel the same way about a male employee because of his gender, because the bros on Iowa’s most important bench don’t even care if this opinion makes sense….

In the case at hand, James Knight, a dentist in Iowa, fired one of his female employees, Melissa Nelson, in the interest of saving his marriage. Apparently the good doctor’s wife caught on to the fact that he wanted to fill his assistant’s cavities, and demanded that Nelson be fired immediately. If “filling cavities” is too broad a term for you, we’ll break it down with some factual tidbits taken from the opinion (available in full on the next page):

  • Knight complained to Nelson that her clothing was too tight, revealing, and distracting, but Nelson denied that her clothing was in any way inappropriate.
  • Nelson was supposed to know that her clothing was too revealing if she caught a glimpse of Knight’s err… dental instrument… standing at attention, and later told her it was a good thing she didn’t wear tight pants, because then he’d “get it coming and going.” Lovely.
  • Knight told Nelson that her dull sex life with her husband was bringing him down, noting, “[T]hat’s like having a Lamborghini in the garage and never driving it.” Knight likely had a case of the sads because he was unable to test drive the exotic thing of luxury between Nelson’s legs.
  • Knight once asked Nelson how often she orgasmed, because that’s totally appropriate.

In all, it sounds like Knight really wanted to see if his dental assistant was any good at giving oral exams, if you catch our drift. The Iowa Supreme Court obviously caught that drift, too, but decided to do nothing about it:

Sponsored

Nelson’s attorney said Iowa’s all-male high court, one of only a handful in the nation, failed to recognize the discrimination that women see routinely in the workplace.

“These judges sent a message to Iowa women that they don’t think men can be held responsible for their sexual desires and that Iowa women are the ones who have to monitor and control their bosses’ sexual desires,” said attorney Paige Fiedler. “If they get out of hand, then the women can be legally fired for it.”

It’s great to know that we’ve come so far as a society, isn’t it, ladies? You really can have it all, so long as you’re willing to bang your boss until the cows come home (hey, it’s Iowa) to prevent yourselves from being fired, because now your sex parts are attractive nuisances — oh wait, we meant to say “irresistible attractions.”

If you’re interested, you can click through to the next page for the full opinion from the Iowa Supreme Court….

Sponsored