Articles Posted in Disability

Last week, we had a two-part series on the interplay between the Family and Medical Leave Act and the Americans with Disabilities Act. The former clearly obligates employers to afford leave to an eligible employee to care for a sick child. But, what about the latter? That is, must an employer provide leave from work as a reasonable accommodation to an employee to permit her to care for a disabled child?

In a case decided earlier this month (Magnus v. St. Mark United Methodist Church), the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals held that the ADA does not require employers to provide reasonable accommodations to non-disabled workers.

However, that does not mean that employers have carte blanche to discriminate against employees who must care for disabled loved ones. Here are a couple of other lessons from the Seventh Circuit:

Tammy Rosebrough was born without a left hand. In September 2007, she applied for a cook position at Buckeye Valley North High School. However, due to a shortage of bus drivers, the school encouraged Rosebrough to become a bus driver. Rosebrough accepted.

Rosebrough claimed that, during her training, her trainer made discriminatory comments to her about her disability on two separate occasions. Rosebrough reported the comments and was informed that her concerns would be addressed.

Later, during her training, Rosebrough was informed that she would need a commerical driver’s license (CDL). She scheduled a CDL test with the State, but later cancelled when her trainer was unavailable to take her to the test. Over the next several months, Rosebrough contacted several other testing centers and school districts but learned she could only be trained by the school district that ultimately hired her. Rosebrough never contacted Buckeye Valley again to return and finish her training.

That’s right folks. It’s time for another edition of “Fact or Fiction” a/k/a “Quick Answers to Quick Questions” a/k/a QATQQ f/k/a “I don’t feel like writing a long blog post.”

Under the Americans with Disabilities Act, an employer is required to provide a reasonable accommodation, if doing so will allow a disabled employee to perform the essential functions of his job. Could this mean having to create a brand new position for a disabled employee?

Nope. A federal appellate court underscored this last week (opinion here) when if affirmed a lower-court decision to dismiss a plaintiff’s claims under the ADA that his former employer had failed to accommodate his disability:

What started out well for the employer…

On April 29, 2009, Catherine Coffman, an employee of Robert J. Young Company, Inc. (“RJY”), got into a motorcycle accident. RJY provided Ms. Coffman with leave under the Family and Medical Leave Act. Just before Ms. Coffman’s FMLA expired, RJY offered to return her to work in a sedentary job that provided the same pay and benefits as her old position. Ms. Coffman rejected the offer because she did not feel that she was able to return to work yet.

…Quickly turned bad. Very bad.

Let’s say you have an employee with narcolepsy. This employee has been working for you for years with no issue. But business needs changed and you reassign this narcoleptic employee to a new shift. Shortly thereafter, the employee comes into HR and requests a shift change. Your response is take FMLA or quit.

Have you violated the Americans with Disabilities Act by failing to accommodate the shift-change request?

Find out after the jump…

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