BY KENNETH FARINO — “Obesity carries with it one of the last forms of socially acceptable discrimination.” This single phrase carries with it an overwhelmingly disparaging sting that many Americans feel every day. For those who apply to jobs but are denied the position in favor of a more conventionally attractive applicant, it seems to them like society places value in people’s appearances as opposed to their actual qualifications. For example, one Texan hospital refuses to hire people with a BMI of 35 or more because the employees should “fit with a representational image or mental projection of the job of a health care professional . . . [including an appearance] free from distraction.” While there has been a recent phenomenon in a raise of weight discrimination in the past decade, there has historically been little action to stem the tide across the country. According to the Yale Rudd report Weight Bias: A Social Issue, prior to 2013 there has only been one state, Michigan, and six cities and municipalities that have laws prohibiting weight discrimination; all other forty-nine states prior to 2013 did not have these protections.
However, last month may have seen the first steps in another state joining that list. For the past fifteen years, a bill prohibiting workplace discrimination based on weight has failed to gain any traction in the Massachusetts Legislature. The proposed bill will make it unlawful “[f]or an employer, by himself or his agent, because of the . . . weight . . . of any individual to refuse to hire or employ or to bar or to discharge from employment such individual.” This year, however, is unlike any other because it marks the first time that H.B. 1758 sailed through the committee that was considering it, “gaining easy approval in a 7-to-1 vote. While the bill is yet to be passed, this news alone may illustrate that more legislatures are gaining awareness of the problem of weight discrimination in the workplace. Other states have bills that are currently awaiting passage, such as Nevada Assembly Bill No. 90, which makes it “an unlawful employment practice to discriminate against an employee with respect to a physical characteristic of the employee,” or Utah House Bill No. 132, which modifies the Utah Anti-discrimination Act to address discrimination based on height and weight.
The news of the Massachusetts Bill passing through the committee with a 7-to-1 vote is encouraging because this may reflect a change in the public’s attitudes about weight discrimination in the workplace. As more of the American population is considered overweight, it is also becoming more apparent that there is a socially accepted form of discrimination against these individuals. However, if more states enact legislation to combat this problem, then protection against weight discrimination may be the first step in combating the social stigma against fat people.
