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Employment & Disability Law—Americans With Disabilities Act Of 1990—The Weight Of Personal Responsibility: Obesity, Causation, And Protected Physical Impairments, Matthew Glover

University of Arkansas at Little Rock Law Review

On July 26, 1990, Congress enacted the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA), which became effective two years later. Because the ADA lacked a list of all the disabilities it covered, courts have considered obesity and morbid obesity to be disabilities in some cases but not in others, notwithstanding the legislation’s desire for clarity and consistency in eliminating discrimination against the individuals with disabilities.

There seems to be a trend towards presuming that obesity is a matter of personal responsibility rather than a protected disability. The most recent developments in obesity jurisprudence have held that morbid obesity—absent evidence of physiological causation—was …