. ThatImage by Vidmir Raic from Pixabay Yesterday, I wrote about a recent Second Circuit opinion in which the appellate court held that an employee with migraine headaches who requested a transfer to another supervisor didn’t have a disability under the Americans with Disabilities Act. That’s because his physical impairment…
Articles Posted in Disability
Stress headaches caused by a particular supervisor aren’t enough to establish a disability because…
Image by mohamed Hassan from Pixabay The Americans with Disabilities Act protects applicants and employees from disability discrimination. When the Americans with Disabilities Amendments Act took effect in 2009, Congress lowered the bar for what constitutes a disability. Indeed, it’s gotten so low, that my usual advice to clients is not…
The EEOC has just weighed in on what employers should know about the Coronavirus and the ADA
I’ve seen enough “What employers should know about the Coronavirus” blog posts to know that I’m sick and tired of reading them. But then the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission posted a Coronavirus update yesterday. And since I like clickbait as much as the next blogger, I’m going to summarize…
When can you ask an employee with a disability for more medical information?
Image by mcmurryjulie from Pixabay Every once in a while, a different client calls me with the same Americans with Disabilities Act question, “Eric, our employee tells us that she has a disability and needs and accommodation. Can we ask for medical documentation to help us evaluate whether an accommodation…
Does complying with the ADA mean offering short breaks to employees who have angry outbursts?
Image by CryptoSkylark from Pixabay Let’s say that you have an employee prone to angry outbursts. Sound familiar? But, what if those outbursts were a symptom of something like bipolar disorder? And let’s say that the employee can control his anger if he takes medicine and short breaks. The Americans…
I’m going to teach you — for free — a $100,000 lesson on workplace accommodations
By National Museum of American History – Image by Godot13, Public Domain, Link Workplace accommodations can be easy. For example, when an employee with carpal tunnel syndrome requests an ergonomic keyboard to perform his job, and his job involves a lot of typing, you get him the keyboard. Or maybe…
Lawsuit: Does the ADA require an adult film website to accommodate a deaf individual by closed captioning the videos?
Image by diapicard from Pixabay In 2020, the Americans with Disabilities Act turns 30. President George H.W. Bush signed it into law in 1990 to ensure civil rights for individuals with disabilities. Chia-Yi Hou at The Hill published a nice 30-year ADA recap here. The ADA is much more than…
“Smokers and other nicotine users need not apply.” Is that even legal?
By Augustus Binu, CC BY-SA 3.0, Link Because I’m a lawyer, I’ll say it depends. Except, I won’t charge you 0.1 hours of my time to say it. Instead, I encourage you to go to SHRM’s website and read this article from Roy Maurer. Roy addresses a decision by the…
ADA accommodations don’t require eliminating essential job functions, like coming to work punctually.
Image Credit: https://freesvg.org/1550658029 (Public Domain) Regular, in-person attendance is generally critical to performing one’s job. So, when an employee exhausts her twelve weeks of leave under the Family and Medical Leave Act only to miss another 33 days of work (resulting in a 59% absentee rate), one’s job security may…
Can a demotion be a reasonable accommodation under the ADA?
Downturn Direction Banks Trend Down Symbol Arrow (Maxpixel.net: License to use Creative Commons Zero – CC0) In the context of an employment discrimination lawsuit, when I think about a demotion, I’m also thinking of retaliation. The plaintiff with a disability was also thinking the same thing in this recent federal court…