This Sunday’s Boston Globe magazine had a long feature piece which addressed the burning question, “Do We Really Need A Law To Protect Fat Workers?” The “law” in question would be a law which forbid “discrimination against overweight and unusually short people.” While I resemble that remark, you won’t be surprised to find me answering the question, “No,” in contrast to the politicians and activists who think it’s a great idea. The problem they face? Too many people inconveniently think that being overweight is a choice; they need to convince these skeptics that weight and race are really the same thing.
Although some people worry that the law would lead to a flood of lawsuits, the supporters of the bill pooh-pooh that notion, based on implausible statistics about disability discrimination lawsuits. Besides, their goal (nudge-nudge, wink-wink) isn’t really lawsuits at all:
Like the race laws, then, the weight-discrimination bill has a goal that extends beyond the legal system: to change the way we think. The idea is not to clog up the courts. Instead, it’s to create a society where hundreds of lawsuits aren’t needed, because there’s not as much to sue over – a society of people who have the legal right to say hurtful things and the compassion to know better than to act on them.
But if it does clog up the courts — the ADA only applies to those so obese that they can call themselves disabled, while the proposed Massachusetts law would apply to anybody who is overweight, which seems to be most of the population — it won’t be the author of the bill who suffers, but employees and business owners.
Of course, even if Massachusetts does pass this law, it wouldn’t be the worst; California already has far wackier anti-discrimination laws with its full-employment-for-lawyers Unruh Act. Unruh, despite listing the usual categories found in anti-discrimination laws (sex, race, color, religion, ancestry, national origin, disability, medical condition, marital status, and sexual orientation) actually has been interpreted by state courts to prohibit all “arbitrary” discrimination. As Cal Biz Lit explains:
In earlier cases, the courts have held the act to prohibit business discrimination based on :
• A customer’s association with a male with long hair and “unconventional” dress;
• Having children; and
• Status as a police officer (when the ACLU tried to kick a cop out of a meeting).
If a creative lawyer hasn’t shoehorned obesity in there already, he will soon enough.
3 Comments
So is the test as to whether a prima facie case has been made be whether the person hired weighs less overall, less per inch of height, or will there be some type of body fram/weight ratio calculation. And then of course, the converse must also apply. If it’s illegal to discriminate against the overweight, then it must be illegal to discriminate against the underweight. As two candidates will seldome have the same body weight, let alone body weight/fram ratio, the attorney employoment possibilities are endless.
San Francisco already has a so-called “short and fat” law. I imagine Overlawyered covered the suit involving the obese Jazzercise instructor. If not, here is one (of many) news accounts:
http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_qn4155/is_20020225/ai_n12455461
So all I have to do to ensure job security is pork out a bit? Obviously, the fact that they fired me after I gained weight is proof that it was the weight that the fired me for.
Great!