The legality of weight discrimination in Canada: an environmental scan of case law and the limits of Canadian legislation

Weight stigma negatively impacts people with higher weights across the lifespan as well as social contexts and can lead to weight discrimination. As weight is not a protected identity in Canadian human rights legislation, it is important to better understand how weight discrimination is being argued in Canada's legal system. The purpose of this environmental scan was to examine and describe Canadian case law and scholarly articles pertaining to the argumentation of weight discrimination in Canada. A three-step search process was taken to identify relevant cases and articles that included; (1) Boolean keyword searches in HeinOnline, WestLaw, and LexisPlus; (2) citation searching within all results that met inclusion criteria; and (3) a keyword search in CanLII. These searches yielded a total of 33 documents that were included for analysis, including 8 scholarly articles and 25 cases. Scholarly articles highlighted consistent criticisms of existing human rights protections for higher-weight people in Canada, mostly pertaining to Limitations of disability protections. Of the 25 cases included, 16 were unsuccessful and 9 were successful, with most cases related to employment (n = 19). Our findings point to significant gaps in Canada's legal system for identifying and correcting instances of weight discrimination. Current Canadian disability protections are inadequate for those who experience weight discrimination, especially those who do not experience disability due to their weight. Our results highlight that weight ought to be a bona fide human rights issue, independent from disability protections.