The Liberty Papers

A local television station in Florida has a report about an employer that refuses to hire people who smoke, even if they only do it in the privacy of their homes:

ORLANDO, Fla. — A growing number of companies in Florida are forbidding their workers from smoking not only at work, but also in their private lives.

Westgate Resorts, the largest private employer in Central Florida, has banned smoking and won’t budge from a policy of not hiring smokers and firing employees who do smoke.

“When I found out it was legal to discriminate against smokers, I put the policy in place,” Westgate president and CEO David Seigel said.

Seigel told Local 6 that the policy was prompted by the death of his close friend — a heavy smoker who died of cancer.

“If you are too stupid to understand that smoking is going to kill you, then we are going to tell you that if you want to work for our company, you will not smoke,” Seigel said.

Central Floridian Ava Bryant said she was called by a recruiter for Westgate and told not to come in for an interview because Westgate won’t hire smokers.

“I call it discrimination,” Bryant said. “I’m not an avid smoker or a constant smoker. I just said I smoke. Sometimes I may pick up a cigarette and smoke.”

Well, Ms. Bryant, you are right, it is discrimination; it just happens to be perfectly legal discrimination, and Westgate’s owner makes clear that he’s willing to base his employment decisions on more than just whether or not you like to light up every now and then:

“Anything we can do that is legal and not discriminatory, we will do,” Seigel said. “If you are an alcoholic and we have the right to fire you, we will do so. And if you are obese and there is a way for us not to hire you or to fire you, we will do that, too.”

“That sounds like discrimination,” Cooper said.

“Well, I’m saying that anything that is not discriminatory,” Seigel said. “If it is, we can’t do very much about it.”

Seigel obviously doesn’t want to be tagged with the word “discrimination”, but that’s because the word has become associated with things like racial and gender discrimination which are both illegal and subject to severe public disapproval. But discrimination merely means that one prefers one thing over another — if I like Diet Coke with Lime as opposed to all other soft drinks, I am discriminating against Diet Pepsi. Discrimination is a part of life because people make choices — it only becomes tagged with the connotation of being right or wrong because of value judgments that society makes about the preferences that someone has expressed.

So what about the value judgments that Westgate is making ? You can say its unfair of them to fire or refuse to hire someone because they might smoke a cigarette or two at home on the weekends, or because they enjoy a few drinks when they get home at night, or because they’re overweight. But, does that make it something that should be illegal ?

In order to answer yes to that question, you have to effectively argue that it’s wrong for people to make choices of any kind because every choice is, at it’s essence, discriminatory. But if we didn’t make choices, then living a meaningful life would be impossible. Put simply, there are things, and people, that people like better than others. That’s part of life and no amount of legislation or litigation is going to change it.

You are discriminating Mr. Seigel, and you have every right to do so.