An employer that has traditionally had a single-gender workforce can seldom validly argue that it should not have to hire employees of the other gender because this would force the employer to undergo additional expenses, such as providing an additional restroom or segregated locker. The justification for requiring employers to expend money to accommodate employees of both genders, so long as this expenditure does not create a serious financial burden on the employer, is to further Title VII’s mission of providing equal employment opportunity and ending present-day effects of historical discrimination. Disparate impact is the legal theory to rely on in making a discrimination claim that a person was not hired due to employer costs of accommodating persons of his or her gender at the workplace, since the absence of appropriate facilities for persons of his or her gender impacts one gender more than the other.
