http://www.salon.com/2013/09/30/fired_for_doing_porn_the_new_employment_discrimination/
After a few years of saving money through feature dancing, Gauge went to school to get her certification as a surgical tech, reaching the top of her class and logging double her required hours in the process. Then an anesthesia tech recognized her, and word spread through the hospital staff that a porn star was among their ranks. “Everybody wanted me in their room, but they started treating me like shyt,” Gauge says. “They made me feel like I was contaminating everything.” By the time she was set to graduate, no one at the hospital would sign off on her required hours.
Although the hospital eventually issued Gauge an apology, she felt both wounded and perplexed by the experience. “I’m thinking, why isn’t anybody asking [the anesthesia tech] how he recognized me?” she says. “OK, so what – I’m the provider, you’re the freaking consumer. Why is what I did so much more wrong than what you did?” Hurt but still undeterred, Gauge went to criminal justice school, then to makeup artist school. When she applied for jobs, she’d be passed over in favor of someone with less experience and training; when she went to church services with her husband and teenage stepchildren, she lived in constant fear of being recognized. After eight years of this treatment, at the age of 33 she decided to return to the porn industry, announcing her comeback film with Brazzers in an interview with porn blogger and director Billy Watson.
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Unfortunately, employee discrimination cases involving sex workers are usually “very, very difficult to win,” says adult entertainment lawyer Michael Fattorosi. Under current discrimination laws, there are no protections for former sex workers, and firing someone for their porn past is “not like saying we’re letting you go because you’re black or Jewish or you wear a turban. Those things are not a result of a life choice you make, and being a sex worker is.” An employee who, like Halas, failed to disclose a porn past on his or her résumé would be compromised even further; the employer could argue that the employee had been hired under false pretenses, leading the court to side in their favor.