New York Metropolis Mayor Eric Adams signed laws Friday that can ban discrimination primarily based on physique dimension by including weight and top to the checklist of protected classes resembling race, intercourse and faith.
“All of us deserve the identical entry to employment, housing and public lodging, no matter our look, and it shouldn’t matter how tall you’re or how a lot you weigh,” stated the mayor, who joined different elected officers in addition to fat-acceptance advocates at a Metropolis Corridor bill-signing ceremony.
Adams, a Democrat who published a book about reversing his diabetes by way of a plant-based food plan, stated the ordinance “will assist stage the taking part in subject for all New Yorkers, create extra inclusive workplaces and dwelling environments, and defend in opposition to discrimination.”
Exemptions beneath the ordinance, which the city council passed this month, embody circumstances wherein a person’s top or weight may forestall them from performing important capabilities of a job.
Some enterprise leaders expressed opposition to the laws when it was earlier than the council, arguing that compliance may change into an onerous burden.
“The extent of the influence and price of this laws has not been totally thought-about,” Kathy Wylde, president and CEO of the Partnership for New York Metropolis, stated in a press release.
A number of different U.S. cities have banned discrimination primarily based on weight and bodily look, together with San Francisco, Washington, D.C., and Madison, Wisconsin. And laws to ban weight and top discrimination has been launched in states together with New Jersey and Massachusetts.
Tigress Osborn, the chair of the Nationwide Affiliation to Advance Fats Acceptance, stated New York Metropolis’s weight discrimination ban ought to function a mannequin for the nation and the world.
Osborn stated the town’s adoption of the brand new ordinance “will ripple throughout the globe” and present that “discrimination in opposition to folks primarily based on their physique dimension is flawed and is one thing that we are able to change.”
The ordinance will take impact in 180 days, on Nov. 22.
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