this post was submitted on 21 May 2024
121 points (95.5% liked)
Not The Onion
12200 readers
654 users here now
Welcome
We're not The Onion! Not affiliated with them in any way! Not operated by them in any way! All the news here is real!
The Rules
Posts must be:
- Links to news stories from...
- ...credible sources, with...
- ...their original headlines, that...
- ...would make people who see the headline think, “That has got to be a story from The Onion, America’s Finest News Source.”
Comments must abide by the server rules for Lemmy.world and generally abstain from trollish, bigoted, or otherwise disruptive behavior that makes this community less fun for everyone.
And that’s basically it!
founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
I was actually talking to a lawyer friend of mine about this yesterday. Not this case, just is being overweight a protected class.
Apparently it isn't, it's illegal to discriminate based on ability which might be limited due to your weight depending on how overweight the individual was but the weight itself is not a protected class. It comes up sometimes when people try to do things like sue theme parks because they can't ride the roller coasters. My friend always has to tell them that they don't have a case.
It gets complicated because sometimes somebody cannot be accommodated because they are in a wheelchair or mobility scooter but that in that wheelchair because of their weight rather than any other disability, at which point technically it would be legal to discriminate against them. Although the defense lawyer would have to prove that there was no other mobility issue other than that caused by weight.
Apparently none of this has any precedent though, so it's basically just legal interpretation rather than actual law.