Unlike the transgendered, short people still look for protection from discrimination in Massachusetts and beyond.

So today, I ran across this article from AOL Jobs, written by Donna Ballman (en employment lawyer) about how there are still legal ways you can be fired based on your appearance.  Believe it or not, you can be fired for being: too attractive, too thin, too fat (unless you are overweight enough to qualify for a disability), too ugly,  too young, improper attire and being too short (although if you are let go for being too short as a female it could fall under the heading of disparate impact, since females are protected under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act).   This never ceases to amaze me, how some groups get protection, while others are still treated unfairly and no recourse is offered.   Here is what Ms. Ballman had to say about short people's plight in the workplace:

Like attractive folks, tall people tend to make more money than short people. Minimum height requirements may have a disparate impact on women, so employers must be very careful in imposing height requirements. If your company tends to equally prefer taller men and women over shorter ones, you may be out of luck. If you're lucky enough to live in Michigan, or the cities of Santa Cruz, Binghamton or San Francisco height discrimination is expressly illegal there. Massachusetts has a similar bill pending in the legislature right now.

The bill in Massachusetts she is referring to is H1758:   http://www.malegislature.gov/Bills/188/House/H1758


Now, the state of Massachusetts has been trying (well Byron Rushing anyway), to get legislation passed to protect the short and overweight for at least ten years.  This bill hardly gets much support obviously from his colleagues there in the liberal, tolerant (or should I say "Tall" erant; meaning tolerance doesn't apply to short people) state of Massachusetts.

Yet, this same state passed a law in 2011 to ban discrimination against people based on them being transgendered or on their gender identity.  Now, even students have to share a bathroom with students of the opposite sex because they identify themselves as being female if they are male or vice versa.  So a male student can walk into a girl's bathroom at school saying that he is really a girl and if the girl objects to his presence, she can face punishment.  So, the Massachusetts Department of Education passes this directive on.  

But apparently, this same state thinks that passing a law to ban height discrimination is more ridiculous than allowing a male into a girls bathroom.   Massachusetts, you're ridiculous!