Ethical and Legal Theories

ETHICAL AND LEGAL THEORIES APPLIED TO BUSINESS SITUATION, AND LIKELY OUTCOMES

Introduction

In 2010, Terry Rosenberg was an up-and-coming actor who auditioned and landed the lead role of Popeye in the Las Vegas stage production of "Popeye the Sailor Man". Terry and the production company, New Actors for Old Cartoons, Inc. (NAOC) engaged in protracted contract negotiations for several weeks and finally settled on a five-year agreement that would pay Terry an annual salary of $350,000. For Terry, this was a dream-come-true; to be able to play the lead role in a major production, to be on stage in the bright lights of a Las Vegas theater, and to perform in front of thousands of people on a nightly basis. As for NAOC and the executive director of the Popeye production, Sal Tate, hiring Terry was a no-brainer. They saw, in Terry, an outstanding new actor with an incredible jaw-line and unbelievably large forearms, and quickly realized he would be a perfect fit for the lead role of Popeye.

Unbeknownst to NAOC and Sal Tate, however, Terry had for countless years struggled with Gender Identification Disorder, or GID. Although Terry was born a man, he always felt different about his sexuality. Terry grew up genuinely believing that he was destined to be a woman, and that one day, when he had the means to do so, he would consider male-to-female sex reassignment surgery. An important point to make here is the difference between intersexuality, and transgenderism or transsexuality.

Generally, intersexuality refers to a condition in which a person's biological sex markers are not all clearly male or female, while transgenderism and transsexuality are used to describe behaviors or identities of people whose gender expression, gender identity, or both, do not necessarily conform with the binary sex norm or may be different from the sex assigned to them at birth. (45 Loy. L.A. L. Rev. 849, 855 (2012))

This is an important distinction to make,...