A hospital tech got caught sleeping on the overnight shift. Blaming a diabetes medication for it, only after getting caught, didn’t turn her firing into disability discrimination.
President George H.W. Bush signed the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) on July 26, 1990, thirty-six years ago yesterday. Here’s the timeline that brought us from that signing to the law you manage today, and where the real risk lives now.
A jury handed down two verdicts in the same ADA case that couldn’t both be true. The trial judge tossed one out, and a federal appeals court just said she was right to.
An excellent teacher with a progressive disability wanted paid leave to get a guide dog. Her employer offered unpaid leave instead. A federal appeals court just said that was enough.
A cocktail server with a foot disability wore Skechers sneakers for two years under an accommodation her employer granted. When new management decided sneakers didn’t meet appearance standards, the employer narrowed the accommodation and eventually terminated her for refusing to comply. Most of the lawsuit went with her.
COVID-era telework was an emergency exception. Courts aren’t treating it as a permanent rewrite of job requirements.
An employee who says “I’m not disabled” can’t turn around and sue for failure to accommodate a disability. The Sixth Circuit just confirmed that’s true even when the employer is the one who raised the disability question in the first place.
A blind customer care advocate asked for screen reading software. According to the EEOC, his employer tested two products, decided the software wasn’t compatible, turned down a free offer from a state agency to help, and terminated him. That sequence cost $270,000.
According to the EEOC, the company’s own doctors cleared two employees as fit for duty. The employer allegedly refused to let them return anyway, unless they switched the medications treating their disabilities. That decision cost $300,000.
The employer granted a dispatcher’s telework accommodation, watched her work successfully from home for nearly three years, then yanked it without ever talking to her according to the EEOC. That sequence cost $280,000.
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