The Bloomberg Law article “Weight-Loss Drug Cases Push to Recognize Obesity as Disability” reviews a growing number of federal and state lawsuits that aim to gain health insurance coverage for GLP-1 obesity drugs based on the definition of a disability.
Professor Katherine Macfarlane, Director of Syracuse Law’s Disability Law and Policy Program, discussed a case in Maine where the plaintiff is diagnosed with a binge-eating disorder and sued their health insurer for coverage of the weight loss drugs. Several appeals courts have concluded that workers need to prove their obesity has an underlying physiological cause to bring an ADA claim.
“The addition of that [diagnosis] is savvy,” said Macfarlane. “It strengthens her case to the extent that they’re in front of a court that’s looking for an underlying condition as well.”
In a separate case, Cigna Life and Health Insurance Company is arguing that case law does not broadly recognize obesity as a disability and that the plaintiff is asking to categorize all obese people as disabled (estimated to be 40% of the U.S. population.)
Cigna is overstating the courts’ views under the US Court of Appeals for the First Circuit, according to MacFarlane. She pointed to the 1992 case of Cook v. Rhode Island, where the U.S. District Court for the District of Rhode Island suggested that no separate physiological diagnosis is needed for obesity to qualify as a disability. A longstanding tenet of disability law also requires case-by-case analyses, she said, rather than broad categorizations.
“I think the defendants are both misstating the plaintiff’s position and also overstating what federal courts have held in the context of obesity as a disability,” she said.