… There's Fire! (originally aired February 28, 2006)
Denny faces divorce immediately after getting married. Alan represents a friend who has been fired because she was a smoker off the job.
- Termination because of Smoking. This lawsuit seems to be based on a Michigan health-care company that reportedly fired four employees in early 2005 after they refused to take tests to determine if they had stopped smoking. The company, Weyco, Inc., defended the policy as a way of managing health care costs.
"So far, our tobacco-free employee policy appears to be a resounding success. Of the 15 to 20 employees who used tobacco before the policy was announced, about a dozen have decided to stop using tobacco. Many have thanked us for initiating the program. Only three have opted-out of the program and decided to seek employment elsewhere," the company said in a January 2005 statement (on-line here).
"Smoking is not a civil right. It's just a poor personal choice," Weyco president Howard Weyers wrote in a February 2005 article (on-line here).
Private employers generally can hire and fire for whatever reason, so long as they do not engage in illegal discriminatory behavior. And, in fact, many states have passed "lifestyle discrimination" statutes that prevent employers from firing people because they smoke while off the job. According to the ACLU, 21 states had passed lifestyle discrimination statutes as of 2005 (on-line here).
However, Massachusetts has not enacted such a law. Without such a law making it illegal for employers to consider off-duty smoking in employment decisions, Alan's friend has no legal basis for bringing a lawsuit against her former employer, and her lawsuit thus was properly dismissed before getting to a jury.
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