Is Obesity a 'Serious' Medical Condition?

Is Obesity a 'Serious' Medical Condition?

Legal Clinic

By Keisha-Ann G. Gray

Question: Is obesity considered a serious medical condition under the Americans with Disabilities Act? Also, is it a condition the employer would have to provide a reasonable accommodation for?  We have an employee who is morbidly obese, has asked for us to provide him with a bariatric-sized chair (that costs a couple thousand dollars), and to place him in a ground floor office so that he does not have to take the stairs, even though we have very limited ground-floor office space.

Monday, January 13, 2014

Answer: What you are probably asking is whether obesity may constitute a "disability" that may be subject to a reasonable accommodation under the ADA. The answer is yes - if the employee satisfies certain criteria. At least one court has rejected an employer's arguments that an individual's weight cannot be considered a disability, particularly in light of the 2008 amendment to the ADA expanding the scope of employee protections under the ADA.  Lowe v. Am. Eurocopter, LLC, No. 1:10 CV 24 A-D, 2010 WL 5232523 (N.D. Miss. Dec. 16, 2010), and another specifically observed that obesity alone, even without an identifiable physiological cause, may constitute an impairment without further medical proof.  EEOC v. Res. for Human Dev., Inc., 827 F. Supp. 2d 688, 693 (E.D. La. 2011).  Notably, the American Medical Association recently voted to officially classify obesity as a disease.