My understanding of the situation is that Western countries/companies don't usually have protected class status on basis of caste. Those protections exist for race, gender, age etc.
Ok are there also specific legal protections for Eye color, Hair Color, presence of Freckles, etc? Does every possible way to discriminate need to be clearly spelled out for it to be illegal?
Your question seems to stem from the belief that discrimination is illegal, which it is not. Discrimination is completely legal, including in hiring practices, as long as you're not discriminating against a protected class (either directly or by proxy). That's why the classes are explicitly enumerated, because if it's not in that list you can discriminate based on it.
If you want to open a shop and put a sign out that says "No customers with blue eyes permitted" you're completely within your right to do so. But let's say you discriminated against some other form of eyes, that maybe disproportionately affected groups of a particular race or national origin, that would be illegal.
In practice, in the US, the categories you listed have all been used as proxies for race and/or ethnicity. Making a claim of discrimination based on proxy characteristics isn't always clear cut, but it sticks often enough to make companies cautious of it.
But yeah, fundamentally, in the American system, something needs to either explicitly or implicitly be a protected class. Otherwise it's legal to discriminate based on that characteristic. Plus the list of protected classes varies by jurisdiction.
Discrimination against eye color would definitely be forbidden as discrimination against race; you can't ban everybody except those with blue eyes without having a racially disparate impact. This is probably true of those other physical characteristics too.
But speaking more generally, the principle in America is that if something isn't forbidden, then it is permitted. You could probably get away with some nonsense like "Don't hire anybody who owns a red car, because red car owners are too impulsive and hot headed"
Yes, and by the same token, discrimination on the basis of caste would likely be judged to have a disparate impact based on nationality, race, and religion (against Hindus / Indians), since such discrimination won't impact people of other races. We just don't have actual precedent about it yet, but any company that doesn't take action over it is playing with fire.
Yeah, I can't think of anywhere in the US this would overlap with a protected class - so long as it was consistently applied. If someone says they discriminate based on your sign, it would warrant a very close look to be sure they aren't actually only checking the birthdates of people of certain protected categories.. this sort of red herring discrimination does happen, but if it was truly and consistently based on someone's sign, that would likely be defensible everywhere in the US.
No, there are not. (In the USA) You are legally allowed to discriminate based on non-protected classes as long as the non-protected class is not being used as a proxy for a protected class.
