Court to Decide if Obese Can Sue Over Hiring Bias

Entering the case of a 305-pound rejected job-seeker, the California Supreme Court on Friday agreed to decide whether to give overweight workers new protection against employment discrimination.

The justices announced they will hear a challenge to a Court of Appeal ruling last July holding that obesity was covered by state law barring job bias against the physically handicapped.

The appeals court held also that employers must shoulder the heavy legal burden of proving that a job applicant was not improperly turned down because of his or her weight.

The employer in the case urged the high court to overturn the appellate ruling, saying it would spawn waves of unwarranted lawsuits against employers. “This is an extremely significant case,” Frederick H. Ebey of Watsonville, attorney for Community Foods Inc., said Friday. “With all the employers leaving California, it doesn’t make sense from a public policy standpoint to subject employers to this sort of burden.”

Friday’s action came in the case of Toni Linda Cassista, a onetime submarine sandwich shop manager who claimed she was illegally denied a job as a clerk at a Santa Cruz health food store because of her weight.

“This was a perceived handicap--and my client will say she is not handicapped,” Cassista’s lawyer, Stefanie M. Brown of San Francisco, said Friday. “The employer simply made assumptions about her weight and her ability to work, and that is prohibited by law.”

Cassista sought employment at Community Foods, a neighborhood cooperative, in 1987. She was interviewed by a five-member hiring committee but was turned down for the job.

The woman said that in a conversation with a committee member, she was told there had been concern whether a 5-foot-4 individual weighing more than 300 pounds could perform the clerk’s duties.

Cassista filed suit, saying she was improperly denied the job because of her obesity, and cited a provision of the state Fair Employment and Housing Act that forbids employers to deny jobs on the basis of physical handicap.