In 2009, the Iowa Supreme Court made national news for its surprising and unanimous decision in Varnum v. Brien, in which it held that the state's ban on same-sex marriage violated the state constitution's guarantee of equal protection. Iowa was not the first state to legalize same-sex marriage – Massachusetts came first in 2004, followed by a handful of others in 2008 – but it was the first to do so outside the liberal confines of the Northeast.

Iowa's high court made headlines again in 2010, when three of the justices who joined the Varnum opinion were recalled from the bench because of the decision. The three included the court's only woman, and all three vacancies were filled by men.

Now the court is back in the news, this time for an illogical decision that misinterprets governing civil rights statutes and reaches a preposterous result. In this ruling, Nelson v. Knight, the court held that a male dentist did not violate a law banning sex discrimination when he fired his very competent female dental assistant because he found her to be an “irresistible attraction” whose very presence might incite him to commit sexual harassment and, perhaps ultimately, cost him his marriage.

This ruling hearkens back to mistakes of the 1970s, when courts, including the U.S. Supreme Court, struggled to figure out just exactly what “sex discrimination” is. But forty years of antidiscrimination law later, we know it when we see it. And this is definitely it. The Iowa court has done women's workplace equality a colossal injustice by allowing men's inability to control themselves to define women's employment rights.

A DAY IN THE LIFE OF DR. KNIGHT'S DENTAL OFFICE

In 1999, dentist James Knight hired Melissa Nelson to be a dental assistant in his office. She was twenty years old and had just received a two-year college degree. She worked in that position for more than ten years and was, according to Dr. Knight, a “good assistant.” She, in turn, said he was a person of “high integrity” and that he generally treated her in a respectful manner. Both Knight and Nelson were married with children.

The tenor in the office seemed to change in the last year and a half of Nelson's employment.