More supreme silliness

In another decision that seems to say that private businesses have a duty to sell at a discount to certain people, the supremes are at it again.

The most offensive thing about the ruling is that it downloads onto private businesses an unreasonable responsibility. Fact is, airlines don’t discriminate by requiring certain special needs individuals to buy extra seats: they just aren’t making exceptions. That’s different. Now, the court has spawned entire exception-making divisions of transportation companies. As a Westjet spokesman put it today, how is the airline to judge who is "morbidly obese" enough to deserve an extra seat, and who’s just really, really tubby, and can manage with one? Who really needs an attendant to fly along, and who just prefers it? Suddenly, airlines are put in the complicated and touchy position of having to size up the legitimacy of your too-fat-for-my-seat claim, while preventing the kind of abuse of this policy that is surely inevitable. This is not the business of airlines.

Canada has a habit of downloading tolerance requirements to the private sector, like this: everything from demanding disabled access to office buildings to requiring restaurants to respect the rights of their employees not to wash their hands. No wonder: legislators come off as sympathetic and caring while someone else pays for it.