102 Iowa L. Rev. Online 335 (2017)

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Abstract

In Discrimination by Customers, Professors Katharine Bartlett and Mitu Gulati ask why antidiscrimination law generally permits customer discrimination. Ordinary moral intuitions condemn a person who decides what to buy on the basis of, say, race, i.e., the race of the seller or the race of the owner or employees of the firm doing the selling. Yet, with a few exceptions, the law permits customers to discriminate on the basis of race or other protected characteristic. Bartlett & Gulati shine a spotlight on an important issue and make analytical progress, but they rely too heavily on simple analogies between different forms of discrimination. An essential part of the normative analysis is to ask why law regulates discrimination at all. Only a general theory can illuminate or justify the legal choice to prohibit or permit different forms of discrimination, including different forms of customer discrimination.