Everyone is part of a legally protected class. For example, you oughtn't discriminate on the basis of marital status. Regardless of who you are you have a marital status, either single, married, divorced, widowed, etc. Or you ought not discriminate on the basis of race. Whether it be white, mixed race, ginger, etc. So while it might be the case that being a member of a minority is a particular instance of a protected class, we all fit into various classes, and the idea is that none of us should face harassment or discrimination based upon our membership therein, regardless of what it may be.
They're part of a class but no, not everyone is "legally" protected. Short people are not a legally protected class, hence why it's possible to have height restrictions in certain employment roles (in the US at least).
But that kind of underscores why "legally protected class" really doesn't make sense for a CoC. Like yeah short people aren't legally protected...but any good CoC should prohibit harassment and abuse against people for their height. Obviously.
As someone else mentioned in another thread - it depends. There are definitely legal protections for being a CERTAIN KIND of short, for instance (such as Achondroplasia).
The law focuses on reasonableness of accommodations and the actual job needs, so for instance you can't discriminate based on height if it is a legitimate medical condition and there is the option of reasonable accommodations - say it's a cashier job, and stool would be perfectly fine and adequately allow them to do the job.
If there is no reasonable accomodations, say because the job is not being a cashier, but being a basketball player, and stools or other devices don't help adequately enough to be competitive, then you could discriminate all you wanted on that condition.
The issue of course is a lot of people can't untangle their own prejudices and ideas of what it takes to do a job or who should be doing it enough to even legitimately articulate the ACTUAL requirements to do a job, and tend to spew a bunch of half though out stereotypes, so they run afoul of it pretty regularly. And the gov't (and labor market) MOSTLY lets them unless they're pretty big.
Putting 'legally protected classes' in the CoC is pretty ridiculous, since there are a ton of different definitions depending on context.
Hardly - 26% [https://www.cdc.gov/ncbddd/disabilityandhealth/infographic-d...] of Americans have a recognized medical disability. Nearly that many are women of child bearing age, and can be discriminated against due to pregnancy status. 34% of Americans are over 50 years old (and officially protected as such).
You would be surprised how few people do not have a clear type of legal protection as part of some class - pretty much just fit, healthy, 18-40 something males really.
