Are women-only car services legal?
A ride-hailing firm plans to hire female drivers to pick up only women and children.
Ride-hailing companies catering exclusively to women are cropping up, raising a thorny legal question: Are they illegally discriminatory?
In Massachusetts, Chariot for Women is promising to launch a service featuring female drivers picking up only women and children. Drivers would have to say a “safe word” before a ride starts.
Michael Pelletz, a former Uber driver, said he started the company with his wife, Kelly, in response to instances of drivers for ridehailing services charged with assaulting female passengers. He believes their business plan is legal and says he’s prepared to make his case in court, if it comes to that.
In New York City, the owners of SheRides also are promising a reboot this summer. Fernando Mateo, who co-founded the company with his wife, Stella, said SheRides put the brakes on its planned launch in 2014 after spending tens of thousands of dollars on legal fees as activists and male drivers threatened to sue. The company settled one challenge, he said.
When the company relaunches as SheHails, men will be permitted as drivers and passengers. It will be left to female drivers’ discretion whether to accept male passengers, and to female passengers’ whether to accept rides from male drivers.
Uber and Lyft don’t give users the option of requesting a driver based on gender. The Taxicab, Limousine & Paratransit Assn., a trade group, says companies vary on whether women may request a female taxi driver.
The federal Civil Rights Act bans gender-based hiring except when deemed essential. Prisons, for example, have been permitted to hire female guards in select situations.
Whether that law applies is an open question. The U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission enforces it, but a spokeswoman noted that employers of independent contractors generally fall outside the agency’s purview.
On the consumer side, many states have antigender-discrimination laws governing “public accommodations” such as transportation services.
But those too, have exceptions. In Massachusetts, for example, women’s-only gyms won a special legislative carve-out in 1998.
Michelle Sicard, a Granby, Mass., resident who recently signed up as a Chariot for Women driver, said she isn’t worried about the legal debate.
“I don’t think it’s discriminating against anyone. It’s another way to make women feel safe,” the 33year-old postal worker said.
But Harry Campbell, an Uber and Lyft driver in Los Angeles, fears the idea could be a “slippery slope” to other forms of discrimination.
Stronger background checks on drivers and regular monitoring of current ones might be a better approach, Campbell suggested.
Female ride-hailing users in the Boston area had mixed feelings. Ashley Barnett, a 24-year-old from Somerville, said the idea is “well intended” but doesn’t address a larger societal problem: people’s overall attitudes toward women.
Carolina Quintanilla, a 22-year-old from Boston, said she’d consider using the service at night. But even then, she said, there’s no guarantee of safety.
“There are crazy women out there too,” Quintanilla said. “You never really know nobody’s intentions. You have to trust your instincts.”