[tptacek]

That's a good question. Lumberjacks and pipeline workers are not required to live in company dormitories; the North Dakota gas boomtowns have cheap family housing, and, presumably, subsidized housing provided by employers is considered employee compensation. Workers on oil rigs have no choice but to live on-site. What's the argument that says you can rig a software company in such a way as to precluding hiring people with families?

[yummyfajitas]

Lumberjacks and pipeline workers are often required to live in encampments near the work site. Some jobs require living in isolation.

These jobs don't "preclude hiring people with families". If a person with a family worked there he'd probably do the same thing as the oil rig worker - live on site and skype his family at night.

The only difference I can see between this job and oil rig work is that the software guy probably has a few recruiters/week emailing him opportunities he likes more.

[tptacek]

That's not the only difference. Pipeline workers who work at remote encampments work in shifts, like truck drivers; they get prolonged time back at home. That's not how a software job works; that time at home is like PTO.

Also, pipeline workers need to work on remote sites. Software developers do not. That will matter at trial.

[nknighthb]

What if the company is based in northern Alaska? What if work hours are 2000-0400?

It's hard to make out a disparate impact claim to begin with. Doing so on the basis that you don't like the living arrangements would seem impossible. What limiting principle would the courts apply that wouldn't result in legal liability for every company that doesn't allow employees to telecommute?

[tptacek]

It's funny you bring that up: employers need to be careful about asking where employees live, out of concern of giving the impression that a candidate's selection depends on where they live or are willing to live. You can ask "can you arrive at the job site reliably every day at 8:45AM", but you cannot safely ask "do you live in the Chicago metro area".

In practice, people do casually ask where candidates live (usually to find out if they require relocation), but companies also don't tend to select only employees willing to live in a dormitory.

Requiring employees to work at a particular job site is uncontroversial; in fact, it's overwhelmingly the norm for all employment. The same thing is absolutely not true of requiring employees to live at a particular location.

[nknighthb]

I notice you didn't answer my question, or provide any practical reason why my hypotheticals are better than Meta's actual practice. Disparate impact claims must demonstrate actual harm to a protected class as distinct from the rest of the population, they don't consist of pseudolegalistic "well, as long as you didn't say it..." arguments.

[tptacek]

Huh? I just pointed out that candidates can make claims simply because prospective employers ask them where they live. I have a hard time believing that yours is a good-faith response.

[yummyfajitas]

Requiring employees to work at a particular job site is uncontroversial; in fact, it's overwhelmingly the norm for all employment.

I don't understand - what does the "norm" have to do with anything? Are you asserting that some underlying legal principle demands that all employers stay within spitting distance of the average?

If not, I don't see how this policy would even fall within some sort of disparate impact theory. As far as I know, disparate impact lawsuits apply to selection processes. I.e. if the employer hires fewer members of a protected class, a process is bad. But if fewer members of a protected class accept job offers, that doesn't fit into disparate impact.