Women’s website Bustle could land itself in court after asking its writers to list their race, sexual orientation, whether they use drugs, have had an abortion or engaged in group sex, according to labor and privacy experts.

A copy of the voluntary survey was posted to Gawker on Thursday. Writers who had already been been hired by the popular lifestyle website were asked a series of extremely personal questions, including what religion they practiced.

Under the section “why you should fill out this survey”, the company told writers they would be more likely to receive “assignments more tailored to your areas of interest and knowledge”, and that completing it “opens you up to possibly getting to write ‘identity articles’ which are really fun, and could give you a chance to work on something outside of your normal Bustle work”.



Lindsey Green, a spokeswoman for the site, said the survey was completely optional and given to the writers only after they had been hired.

But labor lawyer Jonathan Segal said the company was courting disaster, especially with questions an employer is simply not supposed to ask. “When I first saw this, I thought, ‘Is this a spoof, or is this real?’” Segal said. “Some of the things that are on here are OK. You could ask someone, for example, question 22 – ‘What did you major in?’ – or 23, ‘What’s the highest level of education?’ OK. What is your religion? The answer is ‘plaintiff.’”

Segal said questions about rehab, recovery programs and drug use all raise issues with the Americans with Disabilities Act, which says that employers may not discriminate against people who have previously experienced addiction to drugs and gone through recovery, and that employers may terminate anyone who currently uses illegal drugs.

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“Health and health-related information is incredibly sensitive and contextual, easily misinterpreted outside of a doctor’s office and often incorrectly used to characterize a person’s integrity, ideals, etc, and ultimately can be a tool for discrimination,” said Michelle de Mooy, deputy director of the Consumer Privacy Project.

“It’s very difficult to imagine a scenario here where employees don’t feel pressured or even coerced to give up this information,” said de Mooy. “The company is dangling the possibility of better assignments and a closer relationship with editors.”



The project is ostensibly to provide editors with a briefing on which employees are knowledgeable on which topics, but, Segal said, firsthand experience might not necessarily make a great personal essay. “Just because someone’s of a faith doesn’t mean they’re the right person to write about it,” he said. “Just because someone’s had an abortion doesn’t mean they’d want to write about it.”

“You could write it in a way that would be legitimate, but it goes way over the line,” Segal said. “I get the business value, but there’s a way to get there that doesn’t involve all this risk.”

De Mooy also questioned the nature of some of the questions. “What are the stakes for older people who have lived more life or younger people who are waiting for their first break?” she asked. “What about the questions that are clearly targeted just to women such as whether they’ve had an abortion? Voluntary starts to look a lot more like coercive.”

The site’s founder, Bryan Goldberg, has attracted attention in the media world both for Bustle and for his site Bleacher Report, which achieved financial success in part by publishing large amounts of work penned by unpaid and unedited contributors. The site was sold to Turner in August 2012 for between $175m and $200m.

Bustle created controversy when it launched the next year after an unflattering New Yorker profile and a post by Goldberg on tech site PandoDaily (since edited) that trumpeted the site’s feminist credentials but displayed little knowledge of the current women’s online publishing market. The site’s low pay has also been subject to scrutiny. Bustle currently attracts upwards of 30m users a month.