Weighing In: Why Obesity Should Be Considered a Qualifying Disability Under the Americans with Disabilities Act
Anti-fat bias has been described as the last socially acceptable form of prejudice. Weight discrimination persists even though obesity affects over 100 million adults in the United States and obesity rates have continued climbing over the past few decades. Despite the discrimination that fat people face, there is no federal protection against weight discrimination. One potential solution to the lack of existing legal protections is the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA).
Claimants challenging weight discrimination under the ADA argue that weight discrimination is a form of disability discrimination—namely, discrimination based on the medical condition of obesity. Although the medical community increasingly considers obesity to be a complex disease and not a simple consequence of lack of willpower, courts have resisted granting the ADA’s protections to obese plaintiffs.
This Comment argues that courts should recognize obesity as an ADA-protected disability and provide relief to workers who have been discriminated against on the basis of their obesity. To support this thesis, I draw parallels between obesity and gender dysphoria—two highly stigmatized clinical conditions—to highlight how the movement to recognize gender dysphoria as an ADA-protected disability in some courts reveals promising new avenues for recognizing obesity as a disability under the ADA. I then turn to medical research to demonstrate that developing obesity, like developing gender dysphoria, is significantly influenced by genes and hormones. Therefore, obesity should qualify as an ADA-protected disability, even in circuits that have restricted obesity-as-a-disability ADA claims to cases where a plaintiff can show that their obesity is related to a physiological disorder.