An appellate court has upheld a decision to dismiss a Paterson man’s claim that he lost his job as a bus driver and was subjected to a hostile work environment because of morbid obesity.

In essence, the ruling affirms that overweight citizens are not necessarily a protected class under the New Jersey Law Against Discrimination—that “obesity alone is not protected under the LAD as a disability unless it has an underlying medical cause, a condition that plaintiff failed to meet in the present case.”