‘The population is larger’: Brazil confronts fatphobia and passes anti-discrimination laws

In 2015, Brazil expanded a federal law that had been in place for 15 years to include those who are overweight in protections for people with disabilities, giving them the right to preferential seats on public transport and priority in certain places, such as banks.

In São Paulo, there are now wider seats on the subway for overweight people, and in Rio de Janeiro, there are a few wider seats at the Maracanã, the famous soccer stadium. Recently, three Brazilian states dedicated September 10 to promoting the rights of obese people. And one of those states, Rondonia, also passed a law in December that guarantees overweight people “access to all places,” “dignified treatment,” and protection against “fatphobia.”

“What’s happening in Brazil are collective efforts like these initiatives by legislators to address the problem in a way that we don’t see elsewhere,” said Rebecca Puhl, a professor at the University of Connecticut who monitors such laws. “In the US and frankly everywhere in the world, the political landscape is pretty barren.”

Puhl said that since Michigan passed a law in 1976 formally protecting people from weight discrimination, there have been Few relevant policies or derived from this in United States. Massachusetts is considering similar legislation, though similar initiatives have failed in the past. Iceland’s capital, Reykjavik, passed a similar law in 2016. And in 2014, the European Court of Justice ruled that severe obesity can legally invalidate people, potentially protecting them from discrimination, but obesity alone does not guarantee protection.

In Brazilian courts, rulings began mentioning fatphobia in 2014 and have been steadily increasing ever since, according to a review of available rulings by Gorda na Lei (Fat in Law), a Brazilian activist group. In October, a judge ordered a comedian to pay a $1,000 fine for making jokes about the weight of an overweight Brazilian dancer. “The accused undoubtedly emanated fatphobia,” the judge declared in the sentence. Freedom of expression is allowed, added the judge, “but it is the duty of the State to protect minorities.”

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