IANAL, but it's actually not illegal to ask about marital status. It's just illegal to discriminate based on martial status and if you ever landed in court, you might have a tough time explaining why you asked that question if it didn't affect the hiring decision.
Likewise asking for social media password is pretty dangerous even if it's not specifically illegal because it opens you up to claims that you found something on the account that revealed some protected class status.
(And, sadly, Title VII, the federal anti-discrimination law, does not protect against sexual orientation. In many states it is perfectly legal to fire people for being gay. A bill to fix this situation has been stalled in Congress for nearly two decades.)
One obvious example would be if you had hired the interviewee in question. If so, it would be awfully difficult to demonstrate discrimination against them!
Don't get me wrong, it is a very bad idea to ask these questions. But it is not illegal, strictly speaking.
Well, I cannot take a lesbian applying for a job at a college run by Jesuits as an example of rampant sexual orientation discrimination.
Is it possible that the federal laws have had a normalising affect - the different states may have different laws but majority of companies simply go with federal law as they probably don't even know different.
I would be interested in state by state breakdowns of discrimination suits and see if they compare to each other or uk in any useful way. Google not helping here or my brain too dead.
This is definitely series. Sexual orientation and identity are not protected statuses in the United States (some states may have their own laws on the books for this), so being fired for that reason doesn't allow you to file a lawsuit for discrimination.
Likewise asking for social media password is pretty dangerous even if it's not specifically illegal because it opens you up to claims that you found something on the account that revealed some protected class status.
(And, sadly, Title VII, the federal anti-discrimination law, does not protect against sexual orientation. In many states it is perfectly legal to fire people for being gay. A bill to fix this situation has been stalled in Congress for nearly two decades.)