Our marketing group wants to conduct focus group meetings of customers and non-customers. They want to differenentiate by the following aspects that I'm uncomfortable with since they haven't provided a reason why they need to differentiate this way:
1) age - if over "60 yrs", does not qualify
2) income - if under a certain income bracket, does not qualify
3) residency - if not a resident, does not qualify

I don't see in the regs that this would be discriminatory since we are not offering any products, but as someone who used to practice in the civil rights area, I'm uncomfortable. Is there a problem with these exclusion categories?

It's a little hard to provide a specific answer without knowing why they want this data and how they intend to use it.

Right away though, "If over 60 yrs, does not qualify" sounds very discriminatory based on age, which as your gut is telling you, is a big problem. The other two criteria are not protected bases, but need to be analyzed for potential disparate impact. Again, without knowing the why or how, it's hard to be more specific.

What you describe is a standard method of screening a universe to get qualified focus group participants. The questions suggest the focus group is going to talk about subjects which need to have comments from specific types of people. Any good focus group recuriter will know how to use these screening questions without raising any discrimination flags....work with an experienced firm!!!