Bona fide occupational requirement

In employment law, a bona fide occupational qualification (BFOQ) (US) or bona fide occupational requirement (BFOR) (Canada) or genuine occupational qualification (GOQ) (UK) is a quality or an attribute that employers are allowed to consider when making decisions on the hiring and retention of employees – a quality that when considered in other contexts would constitute discrimination and thus be in violation of civil rights employment law. Such qualifications must be listed in the employment offering.

The law of Canada regarding bona fide occupational qualifications was considered in a 1985 Canadian court case involving an employee of the Canadian National Railway, K. S. Bhinder, a Sikh whose religion required that he wear a turban, lost his challenge of the CNR policy that required him to wear a hard hat. In 1990, in deciding another case, the Supreme Court of Canada amended the Bhinder decision: "An employer that has not adopted a policy with respect to accommodation and cannot otherwise satisfy the trier of fact that individual accommodation would result in undue hardship will be required to justify his conduct with respect to the individual complainant. Even then the employer can invoke the BFOQ defence."

In employment discrimination law in the United States, both Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Age Discrimination in Employment Act contain a BFOQ defense. The BFOQ provision of Title VII provides that:

United States Code Title 29 (Labor), Chapter 14 (age discrimination in employment), section 623 (prohibition of age discrimination) establishes that

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