Judge upholds firing woman because of her weight

Time - Most forms of workplace discrimination have been barred for years thanks to state and federal protections. But in 49 states around the U.S., there’s still at least one that’s legal: discrimination based on weight.

Last week, Atlantic County Superior Court Judge Nelson Johnson ruled in favor of Atlantic City’s Borgata Hotel Casino & Spa in a rare weight-discrimination case brought by 22 cocktail waitresses known as the “Borgata Babes.”

They argued that the casino viewed them as nothing but sex objects and were forced to endure frequent weigh-ins and were even suspended when they gained excessive weight, which could not be 7% more than their initial weight when they were hired. The court essentially told the cocktail waitresses that they knew what they were getting into by citing the application process for future “babes,” which stated that the positions were “part fashion model, part beverage server, part charming host and hostess. All impossibly lovely.” Judge Johnson also cited the fact that the casino’s “babes” signed statements agreeing to the 7% weight-gain policy.

“For the individual labeled a ‘babe’ to become a sex object requires that person’s participation and nothing before the court supports a finding of fraud, duress or coercion in connection with the plaintiffs’ hiring,” the judge wrote. “Plaintiffs cannot shed the label ‘babe’; they embraced it when they went to work for the Borgata.”

The case was part sex-based discrimination (the plaintiffs argued that the Borgata did not apply the same restrictions to their male counterparts) but also part weight discrimination. The judge, however, found nothing in New Jersey’s Law Against Discrimination barring any of the casino’s actions. And in fact, only one state in the country specifically bars discrimination based on height or weight: Michigan.

In 1976, Michigan’s state legislature amended its Elliott-Larsen Civil Rights Act to include height and weight discrimination. The author of the amendment, then state representative Thomas Mathieu, told the Associated Press in 2010 that he introduced the bill because “he was ‘flabbergasted’ by the number of cases of unfairness involving women seeking office jobs who possessed the necessary skills and personality, but were overweight.”