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The Employer Handbook Blog
Articles Posted in Disability
Wait, what? Court says ‘good fit’ isn’t necessarily code for discrimination or retaliation.
Employment lawyers and HR professionals generally preach that employees view “it’s not a good fit” to explain their termination of employment as code for discrimination or retaliation.
It’s HR101.
But yesterday, a federal court of appeals explained that this well-intentioned but often misconstrued rationale isn’t always a thinly-veiled, pretextual excuse to fire someone. Sometimes, people aren’t “good fits.” Continue reading
Close counts in horseshoes and accommodating individuals with disabilities at work
Last night, I read a federal appellate court decision in which an employee with back spasms, sciatica, fibromyalgia, and pinched nerves claimed that her employer didn’t give her the help she needed to do her job.
The plaintiff requested a “standing footrest” and “ergonomic chair” as reasonable accommodations. But she claimed she received a “rocking footrest” and a “dilapidated ergonomic chair.” Continue reading
400,000 reasons not to have this pregnancy policy in your workplace
Yesterday, the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission announced (here) that an employer will fork over $400,000, split among 11 women, stemming from a written policy that violates both the Pregnancy Discrimination Act and the Americans with Disabilities Act. Continue reading
A CBD user drug tests positive. Do we have to excuse it? Is she actually disabled?
The EEOC has guided employers to accommodate employee use of certain prescribed medications, and excuse failed drug tests that reflect the presence of those drugs — if it is done safely — because those individuals who test positive likely have an underlying disability.
But, when employee self-medicate — like with CBDs for stress and anxiety — not only is there no duty to accommodate, the employee may not be able to establish an underlying disability. Continue reading
Is your business struggling with return to the office and disability accommodation requests?
As more businesses transition from allowing remote work to mandating a return to the office, apart from the general employee backlash, one of the biggest HR compliance issues companies face is how to address the spike in medical-related requests to continue to work from home. Continue reading
Who gets the job? The most-qualified candidate or a disabled employee requesting reassignment?
Can an employer have a categorical policy of hiring the most qualified candidate when a qualified disabled employee requests reassignment to a vacant role, even if he or she is not the most qualified applicant? The U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission says no.
But the EEOC doesn’t wear the black robe and bang the gavel. Continue reading
Oh, no! Tell me a supervisor didn’t write THAT on an employee’s PIP.
If you haven’t done FMLA training for your supervisors, hopefully, this post will motivate you to get some on the calendar. Continue reading
ADA accommodation requests in Hawaii work the same way as in the other 49 states.
The plaintiff in the case I read last night worked in Hawaii as a customer service representative. She was a clinically obese woman with a long history of diabetes and hypertension, resulting in physical limitations related to neuropathy in her hands and feet. However, her job involved sitting at a desk, taking calls, and answering emails. So she had no trouble performing it for the first seven years of employment.
But, since I’m writing today about an Americans with Disabilities Act lawsuit, things did eventually go south, as you may have expected. Continue reading
No job description? No problem. See why this employer had no duty to accommodate.
The Americans with Disabilities Act bars employers from firing someone because they have a disability. It also requires employers to provide workplace accommodations to otherwise “qualified” individuals with actual disabilities unless going so would create an undue hardship. Someone who is “qualified” can perform the job’s essential functions with or without an accommodation.
Put another way, if the employee can’t do the job with or without help, then the ADA doesn’t protect them – as one employee recently found out the hard way. Continue reading