And Now, Obesity Rights

Got a weight problem? You can enroll in Weight Watchers, share your pain on Oprah, or now, thanks to the ever expanding rights of victims, phone Uncle Sam. You won't lose those extra pounds overnight, or get back your self- esteem. But you could get a wad of cash or that job you've been wanting.

These benefits come courtesy of the courts and the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, which wants to extend the protections under the 1973 Rehabilitation Act and the Americans with Disabilities Act to obese people. Last week a federal appeals court ruled unanimously to uphold an order that required the state of Rhode Island to pay $100,000 in damages to a 320-lb. woman for not hiring her, and then ordered that she be hired as an attendant at a mental retardation facility. "Obesity may, in appropriate circumstances, constitute a disability," the EEOC said in its amicus brief. "It is not necessary that a condition be involuntary or immutable to be covered."

Only the government could think of obesity as a new entitlement. Doesn't anyone stop to think what the creation of another aggrieved group will mean to the already bursting-at-the-seams body politic? Or did anyone fast-forward to the prospect of adjudicating whether a person is fat enough to park in a handicapped space at the shopping mall or should continue to get preferential seating on airplanes? "There is not a legal cure for every wrong," says Fred Siegal, a political science professor at Cooper Union. "This is litigiousness run wild."

Pumping up minor acts of injustice into major ones also fritters away the most important resource society has, which is voluntary compliance. Individuals are deterred from discriminating not because they will be punished by law but because they internalize the value being asserted in legislation. If dramatic claims are made under more and more dubious circumstances, the public becomes cynical and all protections are in jeopardy.

The definition of what constitutes actionable fatness is, well, very broad. To be covered, it is best to be twice the normal weight for your height -- although that's not hard and fast -- have little prospect of voluntarily shedding the weight, and have been that way long enough that it "substantially limits a major life activity or is regarded as so doing."

Then there is intent. In September, California's Supreme Court ruled that a health-food store owner could not reject a job applicant if her fatness was the result of a faulty metabolism or a psychological systemic problem, but could if it was the person's fault. Imagine the cottage industry of fat experts, the obesity counselors, next door to the sexual-harassment ! counselors, at the office, trying to decide whether someone is fat by predisposition or from eating too much Haagen-Dazs.

1. What Obama Owes the Clintons
2. Viewpoint: What the California Gay Ruling Won't Do
3. How Healthy Is John McCain?
4. The US Dilemma Over Chavez
5. Behind the Bush-Obama Smackfest
6. India to America: Eat Less, Fatties
7. Bush Starts a McCain-Obama Brawl
8. The World's Next Top Lama
9. China's Heaviest Toll: Schoolchildren
10. Kids' Show Makes Spinach Cool

You will need to install or upgrade your Flash Player to be able to view this Flash content. Also, Javascript must be turned on.

Grab it! to put Quotes of the Day on your personal page or blog