“Knight’s wife, who worked in the same dental office was also threatened by Nelson’s good looks and insisted that she be fired.”

Wonder if the man at the top was bowing to a much higher power!

Also, if you look at the list of legally protected characteristics for employment discrimination, there is sex, race, and religion among those traits but a person's "attractiveness" is not a legally protected trait and that's why she got a bad deal.

I'm quite sure the wife was wholly responsible for this. Her insecurity drove her to accuse her husband constantly of desiring or participating in an affair, and eventually she made it clear that either the assistant was let go or the marriage would end. Hence the threat to the marriage was quite real, if contrived.

I have to agree with the court, insofar as things go. Hardly a good ending, but the end of a marriage has real and significant financial liabilities which are not matched by the loss of a job.

I don't think the assistant will be too put out. She gets to put on her resume that the reason her last job ended was because she was too attractive. Not the worst thing to have there.

Of course, getting rid of the institution of marriage would solve the whole thing, but that's not happening any time soon.

This whole thing is really weird. For sake of argument, let's assume that he is telling the truth, and this isn't all his wife's fault. It's nice that the guy recognizes his own weakness and is being proactive, but at the end of the day, the problem is with him, not the assistant. Sure, she might be "triggering" his weakness, but he is firing someone else because he's afraid he can't control himself. I understand that he can't just leave his own practice, but this isn't fair at all to her.

Imagine if the dentist were a recovering alcoholic, and the assistant's name were Sue Miller. It would be very weird if he fired her because her last name is the same as his favorite brand of beer, and he's afraid that seeing it all day long will trigger a relapse. That's the exact same logic he used. The only difference is he gets to play some sort of moral high ground card because he's not cheating on his wife.

 Life isn't fair, especially when you have humans picking which other humans they want to be around all day long. I don't see why people think there should be some difference between the freedom to hire or fire anyone you want and your freedom to invite them into or kick them out of your house. Whether those reasons are silly to others or not, people ought to have that freedom.

And obviously physical attractiveness plays a role in the hiring process, that is why people dress up for interviews. An interviewer is greatly influenced by whether or not they like the person and physical attractiveness, personality and all those other things we routinely use to judge people when we first meet them plays a role. There is absolutely no reason why it shouldn't.