Some lawmakers want to include weight as a protected category for employment discrimination purposes. New York City and some states are moving "to outlaw weight discrimination at work," the Wall Street Journal reports. "Signed into law in May, the New York City ban adds weight and height to the list of characteristics protected from discrimination, alongside race, gender, age, religion and sexual orientation."
Similar measures have been introduced in New Jersey and Massachusetts, and Michigan already bans weight-based employment discrimination.
Laws like this make it off-limits for companies to consider someone's weight when making employment decisions such as who to hire, promote, or let go.
Of course, in an ideal world, employers would not arbitrarily discriminate against workers or potential workers because of their body sizes. But there are some jobs for which being overweight or obese might make performing relevant duties more difficult. It's not right for the government to tell private companies they can never consider weight when making decisions about whom to employ.
The more pernicious paradox here, however, is that rules like these stand little chance of effectively ending weight discrimination (to whatever extent that it exists) while simultaneously adding a lot of landmines to the employment landscape, making room for more frivolous lawsuits, and perhaps backfiring against overweight workers.
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