This subject arose because I had been looking for ways to use Microsoft & Google's Family features to manage my kids in a co-parenting arrangement. I have children with my ex that I currently manage. She has other children that she manages.
I quickly learned however that the features are only designed for parents that are still together & that don't have kids outside their relationship.
For example, parents & kids can only be assigned to one family plan. So she, or her partner, can't maintain their own plan while still managing the kids that I share with her.
Now I thought this was poor planning on Microsoft & Google's part to design their products around a traditional family. This might not rise to the levels of discrimination most people are concerned with, but it got me thinking.
For example, if a company learns someone was born out of wedlock if they can refuse to hire them. One of the reasons we have protected classes is to prevent discrimination based on personal characteristics that have been held to be suspect when used as the basis of statutory differentiations. Surprisingly, there are little to no protections when it comes to people born out of wedlock.
Even protections from discrimination by the government for children born out of wedlock is not absolute. While the Supreme Court has interpreted the Constitution to provide some protection from the government, it has been inconsistent and contains intentional loopholes that allow for the imposition of greater procedural burdens.
https://constitution.congress.gov/browse/essay/amdt14-S1-8-7-3/ALDE_00000834/
To me this is surprising, considering that individuals cannot control whether their parents were married or stay together, but yet are not protected by the constitution & congress has not made laws to protect individuals in such scenarios. Some states have included limited protections, but those are generally applied to the parents & are specific to things like housing, not when it comes to employment.
Maybe I'm confused, but I feel like you missed the part when they went from the backstory (investigating google family features) to their revelations from looking into it (companies can refuse to hire you based on this information)
Yeah, it feels like a big leap to go from the first part to the second. Like, how are they related? Hence, mental gymnastics.
It sounds simple and not at all mental gymnastics - they encountered this issue with a minor thing, started reading up on it online, and when digging into that kind of stuff ended up reading on what the legal situation is with discriminating based on it in general, finding out that companies can discriminate when hiring.
If anything, I'd say half of the post is maybe irrelevant, since you don't need the backstory of how OP ended up looking into it, but it seems to be a reasonable recounting of events.
You're basically just proving my point. The first half is "irrelevant", as you said, or "unrelated", as I said. You're filling in gaps from the first half to the second half.
The post goes (paraphrased): It seems like an oversight to not have this feature of having individuals in multiple households. It got me thinking. Companies can choose not to hire you if your parents weren't married.
You've filled in the "it got me thinking" with "....they encountered this issue with a minor thing, started reading up on it online, and when digging into that kind of stuff ended up reading on what the legal situation is...."
That's exactly what I said is the mental gymnastics in response to OP's question, and you're filing it in like they actually explained it.