Lyft is introducing a new feature that lets women and non-binary riders choose a preference to match with drivers of the same gender.
The ride-hailing company said it was a “highly requested feature” in a blog post Tuesday, saying the new feature allows women and non-binary people to “feel that much more confident” in using Lyft and also hopefully encourage more women to sign up to be drivers to access its “flexible earning opportunities.”
The service, called “Women+ Connect,” is rolling out in the coming months. Riders can turn on the option in the Lyft app, however the company warns that it’s not a guarantee that they’ll be matched with a women or non-binary person if one of those people aren’t nearby. Both the riders and drivers will need to opt-in to the feature for it work and riders must chose a gender for it to work.
Then Lyft should focus on driver quality rather than enabling blatantly illegal sex discrimination.
In what way is this illegal?
1964 civil rights act, discrimination based on sex. Pretty obvious case of it.
Is it illegal to choose your primary care physician based on gender? Maybe I’m not reading this entirely correctly, but why would it be illegal to similarly choose your ride driver by gender?
Wouldn’t discrimination be more if Lyft refused to hire male drivers or something to that effect according to the civil rights act?
Because it’s against the law, as it is written. It isn’t a BFOQ for a taxi driver to be male, female, young, old, of any particular race or religion, so yeah, discrimination on those qualities clearly violated the law.
Preferentially encouraging discrimination against male drivers is still discrimination, even if male drivers are still allowed on the platform.
The customer is making the choice not the business. When you search for primary care physicians in most networks, you can search and filter by gender. Again, is this illegal by your insurance/network to allow this filter?
the business is preferentially participating in the customer choice
customer choice is also covered by the 1964 civil rights act, it’s just nearly always unenforceable unless someone goes on a racist/sexist tirade
when insurance companies allow people to filter for male and female doctors, they’re allowing people to prefer both options, so they’re not preferentially participating in the choice like Lyft is here. And, there are medical specialties where one could argue that being either male or female was a BFOQ. Being a taxi driver doesn’t involve one’s genitals like being an obstetrics patient does. If you are using your genitals to operate your car, you’re doing it wrong.
Fair enough.
It will be interesting to see how this holds up in the courts, whether they can argue it’s in fact a BFOQ, or whether that actually applies here.
I’m waiting patiently for the first man to actually get this to court.
gets LOTS of popcorn ready.
I see. It’s not like Lyft isn’t taking on drivers who are men, it just allows women and enby pax the option to set a preference for women and enby drivers.
It would be interesting to see it argued in court that this constitutes as discrimination.
The analogy here is providing an option for a customer at a restaurant to select which race or gender they want serving them. Yes, definitionally, it is discrimination by sex. Especially because no one is given the option to pick a male driver, this will just result in women receiving more ride requests while they’re active and driving.
I can’t see how this would be anything but a slam dunk violation of federal law. Lyft is actively and obviously participating in discrimination on the basis of sex by enacting this policy.
What they SHOULD be doing is raising driver pay and enacting real protections for their passengers which do NOT violate federal law.
The fact that Lyft classifies their drivers as contractors rather than employees may allow them to get away with it.
I doubt it. Unless you think it would be legal for a company to preferentially contract with only white men, this would violate title II
That’s not going to look good in the media cycle. Here’s hoping you don’t find the eventual plaintiff among the bigots in this thread.