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The Employer Handbook BlogPay attention HR! Transgender employees may have ADA (disability) rights too.
My decision to sit at the computer and begin blogging at 10:48 PM on a Sunday has backfired on me, for sure. Continue reading
Articles Posted in Disability
A trucking company agrees to pay $65K, because it didn’t hire an amputee to drive its trucks
Yep, we’re gonna continue yesterday’s discussion of how stereotyping and false assumptions can create yuuuuuuge Americans with Disabilities Act problems for employers. Continue reading
Fear of the Ebola Monster, and acting on other stereotypes, can create scary ADA lawsuits
There are three types of disabilities under the Americans with Disabilities Act:
- a physical or mental impairment that substantially limits one or more major life activities (an “actual disability”), or
- a record of a physical or mental impairment that substantially limited a major life activity (“record of”), or
- an actual or perceived impairment that is not both transitory and minor (“regarded as”).
It’s the “regarded as” prong that I’m going to address today with a little help from the EEOC and Yo Gabba Gabba. Continue reading
Join me for a free ACA / ADA / FMLA event next month!
Do employee-leave issues and ACA woes have you feeling like this?
Well, next month, my friends at Kistler Tiffany and I have got your back. We’re presenting two free, live seminars to help you tackle your ACA, ADA, and FMLA issues.
- The first will be on Wednesday, May 10, 2017 from 9:30 AM to 11:30 AM in Berwyn, PA.
How the heck does a plaintiff without a disability go to trial on her ADA claims?!?
The biggest impact on employers, when the Americans with Disabilities Act Amendments Act took effect on January 1, 2009, was to downplay whether an employee actually had a disability, and get businesses focusing more on whether there existing a reasonable accommodation that would permit an employee to perform the essential functions of the job.
Many management-side employment lawyers joked that, under the ADAAA, everyone had a disability. That’s how easy it was to establish.
Well, except maybe a cleft palate.
Three pitfalls to avoid when setting essential job functions and determining ADA accommodations
A few months ago, I was waxing poetic about plutonium, how to establish essential job functions, and quality-testing diet scrapple. What got into me?
Now, I’ve got a cautionary tale, in the form of a recent federal court opinion, to help you good folks navigate away from some of the Americans with Disabilities Act traps. Lest you like litigation and lawyer bills.
No, not even the ADA requires accommodating an alcoholic’s DUI-related incarceration
By Versageek (Own work) [CC BY-SA 3.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0) or GFDL (http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/fdl.html)], via Wikimedia Commons
Allowing an alcoholic to attend AA to remain clean and sober? That works.
But, accommodating an alcoholic who “falls off the wagon,” gets a DUI, and needs time off from work because he is incarcerated? Not so much.
2d Cir: Pharmacists must inject customers. Oh, word?
No, the Second Circuit Court of Appeals didn’t say, “Oh, word?” But, it did just toss a $2,600,000 jury award in favor of a pharmacist in an Americans With Disabilities Act case.
Doggone it! When an employee is allergic to a coworker’s service animal.
Who knew?
I received a lot of feedback on last week’s post. That was the one about an EEOC lawsuit alleging that a company violated the Americans with Disabilities Act when it allegedly failed to accommodate a disabled employee’s request to use a service dog.
Among the reader feedback was a question about what happens when permitting an employee to use a service dog would cause another employee’s pet allergies to flare up.