Weight Discrimination
By Amy E. Feldman
PHILADELPHIA (CBS) - Is forcing your wait staff to get weighed in illegal?
A New York restaurant and bar is being sued by two waitresses who claim that their bosses forced them to step on the scale at work regularly before they could start waiting tables.
The question is: is it illegal? Offensive and obnoxious, yes, but actually, there's no federal law that prohibits judging a person on the basis of weight.
The women claimed that, coupled with the weigh-ins, they were subjected to constant comments made about their appearance and physique and got fired when they complained. If they weighed only the women and then held them to a different standard on the basis of their gender, then it's not so much a case of weight discrimination - which isn't against the law - as gender discrimination, which is illegal.
And so the scales (of Justice) are now turning against the establishment, as the state's court of appeals has given the go-ahead for the case to proceed. I think that every day before court, they should be forced to stand on the scale and then try defending themselves.
