A woman’s height is not a “predisposing genetic characteristic” protected from job discrimination, a judge has ruled.
“The height of plaintiff is undisputably outside the scope of the plain meaning of the phrase ‘predisposing genetic characteristics’ as a prohibited basis for discrimination in the workplace,” Queens Supreme Court Justice Kevin Kerrigan (See Profile) wrote in Peterson v. City of New York, 10282/12. “Clearly, a fully mature adult such [as] plaintiff who has attained her maximum growth cannot be ‘predisposed,’ genetically or otherwise, to becoming that height. There is no issue in this case of predisposition to anything, whether medical or generally anthropomorphic.”
