I just read this article about Musk/Twitter being sued for gender discrimination for laying off more women than men: https://www.nbcnews.com/tech/tech-news/twitter-accused-targeting-women-layoffs-new-lawsuit-rcna60795 The facts will be litigated and there may be other reasons uncovered, but at first glance, the discrepancy, 57% vs 47% isn't that high and can easily be explained by more women refusing to return to the office(Musk famously hates WFH) due to having family responsibilities.
The article also mentions a separate law-suit by people with disabilities, who were fired for refusing to return to the office.
Women and disabled people obviously benefit more from WFH, so cancelling it has a disparate impact on those(protected) groups, but if this is found to be discrimination, it will have a much bigger impact than Musk. US cities have been hit hard by WFH and are trying desperately to get companies to return employees to the office so they can spend money in the city, e.g. https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2022-02-16/nyc-mayor-tells-ceos-to-end-work-from-home-policies and have cancelled their own WFH policies to set an example:https://www.fox5ny.com/news/mayor-adams-nyc-workers-return-to-office All of that could be discrimination vs women, the disabled, blacks(use public transit more, harder to get to work), etc.
Question: will this be ruled discrimination based on the Disparate Impact Doctrine or will the consideration of the possibly catastrophic impact of such a precedent on US cities influence the outcome? Note that I'm just talking about WFH, if any other discimination comes out of the lawsuit, that's a different matter
