Court rules this N.J. casino can fire its ‘Borgata Babes' for gaining weight
According to a recent ruling, it is legal for a New Jersey casino to regulate employees weight.
An appeals court held up a 2013 decision, which found in favor of the Borgata Hotel Casino and Spa in a class action suit brought by several employees who contested the casino’s Personal Appearance Standards (PAS), which, since 2005, bars the so-called Borgata Babes from losing or gaining more than 7% of what they weighed at the time. The rule, they said, discriminated against women, and lead to sexual harassment and unhealthy practices among staff. The Press of Atlantic City reported at the time:
Some women claimed they were told to take laxatives prior to mandatory weigh-ins or directed to stop taking prescription medications that cause weight gain, court documents show.
Back then, New Jersey Superior Court Judge Nelson Johnson explained that the casino had the right to monitor the Babes’ weight because they were hired, essentially, as sex objects. The Press reported that Johnson wrote in his decision:
The Borgata Babe program has a sufficient level of trapping and adornments to render its participants akin to ‘sex objects’ to the Borgata’s patrons. Nevertheless, for the individual labeled a babe to become a sex object requires that person’s participation…. Plaintiffs cannot shed the label babe; they embraced it when they went to work for the Borgata.
In other words, if you sign up to be a Babe, you must abide by the rules of being a Babe, no matter how demeaning. On appeal, judges reiterated the sentiment. Judge Marie Lihotz wrote in the decision: