Reverse Discrimination in the News

There is a Yahoo! Sports story about a softball coach who is being replaced by a female coach.  The coach believes that the school is discriminating against him, and he is currently considering his options.  (The article can be found at http://sports.yahoo.com/blogs/highschool-prep-rally/softball-coach-claims-reverse-discrimination-ousting-because-school-100523488.html.)

Let me say, first of all, that I think the story and its title are a bit misleading.  The suggestion is that the coach was fired in order that the school might hire a female coach in his place.  Later in the story, however, it is revealed that the coach in question ... Brandon Cobb ... will continue to coach volleyball and teach government classes.  He is simply being relieved of his duties as the coach of the softball team.

This casts a very different light on the story, in my opinion.  There are two sides, both of which are presented.  The superintendent stated that he believed it to be important to include female coaches -- noting that the school does not currently have any women in coaching positions.  The author of the story points out that the lack of female coaches on the athletic staff could be construed as an existing institutional discrimination.  On the other side of the issue, Cobb suggests that it would be considered discriminatory if a woman were told she couldn't coach any more, simply because the school wanted a man to do the job.

Unfortunately, Coach Cobb, I'm not sure your argument carries much weight.  If the school district were to fire someone, it might be different (although I'd have to think a little harder about that one to be sure).  But this is a question of assignments -- where no one is being dismissed from their employment -- and employers (school districts) have a right to reassign people as they believe will best serve the interests of the business (school) and its customers (students).  And the fact that the students participating in softball and volleyball are girls would actually give the district a valid reason for suggesting that a female coach would be preferred.

Without offering a trivial example, suppose that I worked at a fast food restaurant -- sometimes as a cook, but other times as a cashier.  Perhaps I have been working the counter (as a cashier) for the past two months, and I haven't done anything wrong which would suggest that I was doing a poor job.  Can the manager decide to move me back into the kitchen (as a cook)?  Of course she can.  Her job, as manager, is to determine what will work best for the business.

Perhaps we might question the manager's judgment if I was moved simply because she wanted the counter staffed by females.  I'm not convinced that it is discriminatory, though.  And, in the case of the school district, there are good reasons which could be offered for the change.  So I'm just not seeing reverse discrimination involved in this one.