A Triumph of Substance over Form in How Discrimination Law Treats Obesity

Human rights legislation in Canada and the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms(collectively, “human rights law”) have long focused narrowly on a closed category of relatively immutable personal characteristics such as race, sex and religion as grounds of impermissible discrimination. The law recognised a similarly narrow set of disabilities, chiefly “traditional” handicaps that cause physical limitations such as blindness or paraplegia.