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15 August 2014 / Michael Salter , Chris Bryden
Issue: 7619 / Categories: Features , Employment
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A weighty issue

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Chris Bryden & Michael Salter consider whether obesity is a disability

Without apparent irony, the opening sentence of the Opinion of the Advocate General in the well-publicised case of Kaltoft v the Municipality of Billund C354/13, 17 July 2014, notes that “obesity is a growing problem in modern society”. The question for consideration was to what extent European discrimination law applied to obesity.

The case of Kaltoft

Mr Kaltoft was obese, and it was common ground that he had been so throughout the 15 years that he was employed by Billund as a childminder. At the time of his dismissal he weighed some 160kg, being a shade over 25 stone, or about the same as an ostrich. Kaltoft brought a claim relying on two inter-related grounds; first that his dismissal based on his obesity was a breach of the general prohibition of discrimination in the labour markets, and second, and more specifically, that obesity itself amounted to a disability and thus infringed Directive 2000/78/EC.

Kaltoft’s employment as a childminder involved him being sent

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