Ask the internet whether it is legal to refuse someone a job for being fat, and you get a list. The lists disagree with each other, and several of them are wrong in the same way: they count a bill that died as a law that passed.
This page is our attempt to keep one list that is checked at the source. Every row below was verified against the parliament’s own bill page, not against a law-firm newsletter, an advocacy tracker or a summary. The check date is on every row. When a row is out of date, it is because we have not re-checked it yet, not because we are guessing.
How to read this page
Three things make this subject easy to get wrong, and all three are avoidable.
Bill numbers repeat. Most parliaments start counting again at the beginning of each session. S.23 in one Vermont session and S.23 in the next are two unrelated bills. So is S.1249 in the 193rd and the 194th Massachusetts General Court. Every number on this page is given with its session. A number without a session is not a citation.
“Introduced” is not “advancing”. A bill can be introduced by ten sponsors, generate a press release and a wave of coverage, and then sit in one committee until the session ends. That is the ordinary outcome, not an unusual one.
The memo is not the text. A sponsor’s explanatory memo and the printed bill text are separate documents, and they do not always cover the same ground. One bill on this page is described in its own memo as covering height and weight, while the text as printed covers weight alone.
In force
| Jurisdiction | Instrument | Covers | Key dates | Checked |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Michigan (US state) | Elliott-Larsen Civil Rights Act, Public Act 453 of 1976 | Height and weight, alongside religion, race, colour, national origin, age, sex, marital status | Enacted 1976, effective 31 March 1977 | 26 Aug 2026 |
| New York City | Local Law 61 of 2023, from Int. 0209-2022, amending the NYC Human Rights Law | Actual or perceived height and weight in employment, housing and public accommodation, with stated exceptions | Signed 26 May 2023, effective 22 November 2023 | 26 Aug 2026 |
| Minneapolis | Title 7 of the Minneapolis Code of Ordinances, Civil Rights Ordinance, as amended | Height and weight, defined as a numerical measurement of body height, weight or size, and expressly including perception | Council approved 1 May 2025, mayor approved 5 May 2025, effective 1 August 2025 | 26 Aug 2026 |
Michigan is the only US state on this list, and has been since the Ford administration. That is the single most useful fact about the state of this law: nearly fifty years, one state.
The Minneapolis amendment is the most recent and the most carefully drafted of the three, because it addresses perception directly. A rule that only protects measured bodies does not reach the manager who decides someone looks too fat for the front desk. Minneapolis says the protection applies whether or not the measurement matches.
Pending
| Jurisdiction | Bill and session | Last recorded action | Where it sits | Checked |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| New Jersey | S1631, 222nd Legislature (2026–2027) | Passed the Senate 24–14 and referred to the Assembly Judiciary Committee, both 24 February 2026 | Assembly Judiciary Committee | 26 Aug 2026 |
| New Jersey | A4563, 222nd Legislature (2026–2027), companion to S1631 | Introduced and referred, 10 March 2026 | Assembly Judiciary Committee | 26 Aug 2026 |
| New York State | S9803, 2025–2026 session | Introduced and referred, 6 April 2026 | Senate Investigations and Government Operations Committee | 26 Aug 2026 |
| Massachusetts | S.1249, 194th General Court (2025–2026); House companion H.1919 not separately checked | Reported favourably by the Judiciary Committee and referred to Senate Ways and Means, 5 February 2026 | Senate Ways and Means | 26 Aug 2026 |
| Delaware | HB 115, 153rd General Assembly (2025–2026) | Motion to release from committee failed, 14 May 2025 | House Administration Committee | 29 Aug 2026 |
Four of these five rows deserve a sentence each, because the one-word status hides the useful part.
New Jersey is the furthest along and has been here before. S1631 is the carry-over of S1602 of the 2024–2025 session, which also passed the Senate and also landed in the Assembly Judiciary Committee, where it stopped. The bill would add height and weight to the Law Against Discrimination itself, in the same list as race, creed, colour, national origin, ancestry, age, sex, gender identity or expression, sexual orientation, marital status, familial status, military service, disability and nationality. Passing one chamber twice is real progress and is also not a law.
New York State is the row where the memo and the text diverge. The sponsor’s memo describes a bill prohibiting discrimination based on height or weight across employment, housing, public accommodation, credit, internships and education. The printed text of S9803 adds a single new section, Executive Law § 296-e, covering weight. Height does not appear in the operative text. Anyone citing this bill as a height-and-weight bill is citing the memo. The predecessor, S2440-B, passed the Senate in the 2023–2024 session and went no further; S3841 of 2025 died in the same committee this bill now sits in.
Massachusetts is where a number collides with itself. In the 194th General Court, S.1249 is “An Act prohibiting body size discrimination”, filed by Senator Rebecca Rausch. In the 193rd, S.1249 was “An Act relative to reducing administrative burden”, a mental-health bill by a different senator, which died in Senate Ways and Means on the last day of 2024. Two bills, one number, four years apart. This is the most common way a tracker goes wrong.
Delaware looks pending and is barely breathing. HB 115 was introduced on 8 April 2025 with ten sponsors and assigned to the House Administration Committee. On 14 May 2025 a motion to release it from that committee failed. That is the last recorded action. As of today the bill has sat in the same committee for sixteen months, with no committee report, no roll call and no amendment on file. It is technically alive and functionally stalled, and a tracker that prints “pending” for it says nothing useful. Two things we checked on 29 August 2026 make that concrete. Getting a bill out of an unwilling committee takes the written request of a majority of the members elected to the House under House Rule 27, which is 21 of 41 seats; nine House members have put their names on HB 115. And the session has closed: the most recent legislative action recorded by the assembly is dated 1 July 2026, with no session days on the calendar since. We walk through both in Delaware HB 115: what “pending” hides.
Failed
| Jurisdiction | Bill and session | What happened | Checked |
|---|---|---|---|
| Vermont | S.23, 2023–2024 session | Introduced 19 January 2023 by Sen. Ruth Hardy, one committee hearing on 24 February 2023, no further action, no act | 26 Aug 2026 |
Vermont is the reason this page exists. Search for it and you will find sources treating Vermont as a jurisdiction with weight-discrimination protection, sometimes attaching a session-law number to it. There is no such act. What exists is a bill from the 2023–2024 session that got a single hearing and stopped. S.23 of the 2025–2026 session is an entirely different bill, about synthetic media in elections, and it has been sitting in the Government Operations Committee since 22 January 2025. Two numbers, two sessions, one confident and wrong entry in a lot of lists.
No ground in federal law
| Jurisdiction | Instrument | Position | Checked |
|---|---|---|---|
| Germany | § 1 Allgemeines Gleichbehandlungsgesetz (AGG) | The listed grounds are race or ethnic origin, gender, religion or belief, disability, age and sexual identity. Weight, height and body size are not among them | 26 Aug 2026 |
Germany has no equivalent to Michigan, to New York City or to Minneapolis, at federal or state level. What it has is a closed list of six grounds, and body size is not one of them. Claims are sometimes routed through disability law instead, which requires the person to be classified as disabled first. We wrote about what that does to the numbers in our piece on Germany’s discrimination survey: a ground that is not surveyed produces no cases, and no cases is then read as no problem.
Protected by court decision, not by statute
| Jurisdiction | Instrument | Covers | Key dates | Checked |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Washington (US state) | Taylor v. Burlington Northern Railroad Holdings, Inc., No. 96335-5, Washington Supreme Court. No statutory ground: the WLAD does not list weight, height or body size | Obesity as an “impairment” under RCW 49.60.040(7)(c)(i), and therefore as a disability. Merely being overweight is expressly not covered. Perception is enough for a disparate treatment claim | Certified question from the Ninth Circuit 17 September 2018, decided 11 July 2019. RCW 49.60.040 amended in 2020 and 2024 without touching subsection (7) | 27 Aug 2026 |
Washington belongs in its own section because the mechanism is different in kind, not in degree. Michigan names weight as a ground and a person points at the ground. Washington has no such ground, so protection runs through the disability definition, which means a person’s body has to be classified as a physiological disorder or condition first. That is a court’s reading of a definition written for something else, and it is the same detour German claims take through the AGG. We set out what the ruling says and where it stops in our piece on the difference between a law and a ruling.
What is deliberately not on this page yet
Other jurisdictions appear on published lists and are plausibly correct. San Francisco, Santa Cruz, Madison, Urbana, Binghamton and Washington DC are all cited as having body-size or personal-appearance protection; New Jersey A3893 and a Connecticut proposal both show up in coverage.
None of them are in the tables above, because we have not yet read them at the source. They will be added one at a time, each with its own check date, and if one of them turns out to be another Vermont we will say so.
What this page is not
This is a record of what the law says and where each instrument stands, on the date given. It is not legal advice, and none of us is your lawyer. If you think you have been discriminated against, the useful next step is someone qualified in your jurisdiction, not a table on the internet.
Sources
- Michigan Legislature, Elliott-Larsen Civil Rights Act, Act 453 of 1976: https://www.legislature.mi.gov/documents/mcl/pdf/mcl-Act-453-of-1976.pdf
- NYC Commission on Human Rights, height and weight: https://www.nyc.gov/site/cchr/media/height-and-weight.page
- New York City Council, Int. 0209-2022: https://legistar.council.nyc.gov/LegislationDetail.aspx?ID=5570369&GUID=DF289A07-73A5-4AFE-8932-7EA5D1FA6577
- City of Minneapolis, expanded civil rights protections: https://www.minneapolismn.gov/news/2025/august/new-civil-rights-protections
- Minneapolis Civil Rights Ordinance, Title 7: https://lims.minneapolismn.gov/Download/FileV2/49538/Civil-Rights-Ordinance.pdf
- New Jersey Legislature, S1631 text, 222nd Legislature: https://pub.njleg.gov/Bills/2026/S2000/1631_I1.HTM
- New York State Senate, S9803, 2025–2026: https://www.nysenate.gov/legislation/bills/2025/S9803
- Massachusetts General Court, S.1249, 194th: https://malegislature.gov/Bills/194/S1249
- Massachusetts General Court, S.1249, 193rd, for contrast: https://malegislature.gov/Bills/193/S1249
- Delaware General Assembly, HB 115, 153rd: https://legis.delaware.gov/BillDetail?legislationId=142056
- Vermont General Assembly, S.23, 2023–2024: https://legislature.vermont.gov/bill/status/2024/S.23
- Vermont General Assembly, S.23, 2025–2026, a different bill: https://legislature.vermont.gov/bill/status/2026/S.23
- § 1 AGG: https://www.gesetze-im-internet.de/agg/__1.html
All rows last checked 26 August 2026.
What “pending” costs: the exit rule, by chamber
“Pending” says a bill is in a committee. It does not say what it would take to get it out, and that differs by chamber. We read the rules in the original on 30 August 2026. In the New York Senate there is no threshold at all: Rule VI section 2 provides that a motion to discharge a bill out of committee by any member who is not the introducer “shall be out of order”, so S9803 can be moved only by Senator Sepúlveda. In the Massachusetts Senate, Rule 27C discharges the Committee on Ways and Means on the written petition of a majority of its own members after 45 calendar days; the committee had eighteen members on 30 August 2026, so the number is ten, and the 45 days for S.1249 ran out on 22 March 2026. In the New Jersey General Assembly, Rule 10:23 lets only the prime sponsor move, requires the committee to have met three times, and needs 41 affirmative votes of the eighty seat chamber; the New Jersey Senate equivalent, Rule 12:6, requires 60 days and 21 votes of forty. Full working: The Number No Tracker Prints.