Mayor Eric Adams signs a bill outlawing weight discrimination in New York City
Democratic Mayor Eric Adams has banned weight discrimination in New York City, which critics say is testing lawyers.
Adams signed a controversial bill on Friday that would ban discrimination based on a person’s weight and height in employment, housing and public accommodation.
“I am a person who believes in health. So when you talk about not discriminating against someone because of their body type, it’s not about fighting obesity; it’s just about being fair,” Adams said.
“So I think this is the right thing,” he continued. “We will continue to talk about our progressive health agenda. Science has shown that body type has no relation to being healthy or unhealthy and I think that’s a misnomer that we’re really clearing up.”
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The city’s human rights commission will investigate complaints about weight and height, in addition to its more than two dozen other areas of investigation, including race, gender and age.
Meanwhile, critics have targeted the bill, saying it will result in a day’s work for lawyers and a spate of lawsuits.
New York City Mayor Eric Adams signed a bill into law banning weight and height discrimination on Friday. (Luiz C. Ribeiro/New York Daily News/Tribune News Service via Getty Images)
New York City Council Minority Republican leader Joseph Borelli said the law could open the floodgates for people to “sue anyone and anything.”
“I’m overweight, but I’m not a victim,” Borelli said, according to the Daily Mail. “No one should feel sorry for me except for my weakening shirt buttons.”
The New York Post editorial board called the bill a “bold gift to New York’s legal bottom-feeding sharks.”
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New York City joins a growing trend to combat weight discrimination across the country. (Photo by Roy Rochlin/Getty Images for Literacy Partners)
The law is part of a spreading trend across the United States. The New York Times reported that lawmakers in New Jersey and Massachusetts are considering similar measures, while other places such as Michigan, Washington State and Washington, DC already ban it.
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“Health equity” has also become a woke agenda item at universities across the country as progressive academics have sought to eliminate “fatphobia,” or the cultural stigma attached to obesity, including doing away with the word “obesity” itself, as Fox News Digital previously reported .