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The Employer Handbook BlogHow not to respond when an employee complains about sexual harassment
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Articles Posted in Discrimination and Unlawful Harassment
Court rules that company need not allow mass unscheduled prayer breaks
We’re talking religious accommodations here at the ole Handbook.
Last week, it was the Mark of the Beast. Before that, we explored Ramadan bagel parties.
Today, we’re sticking with the Ramadan theme. Unfortunately, I don’t know any Ramadan tunes to soundtrack this post. So, let’s just go with Christian rock.
New NJ bill targets pregnancy and childbirth discrimination
New Jersey is the home of deep fried hot dogs and the Law Against Discrimination, one of the most employee-friendly anti-discrimination statutes in the country. Here, pregnant employees can order a ripper with relish at Rutt’s Hut, but, somehow, are not entitled to preferential leave treatment in the workplace.
However, a new bill pending in the NJ Senate would change all that.
Not the hot dogs, silly. They rule. You know what doesn’t rule? Leaving a quart of Rutt’s Hut relish in the backseat of your buddy’s car overnight during a high-90s Summer heat wave. Sorry, dude.
An employer is not required to change supervisors as an ADA accommodation
Work got you anxious and depressed? Well then, you may be disabled under the Americans with Disabilities Act. But if you think that the ADA requires your employer to transfer you away from the supervisor who is giving you a hard time, think again.
In Lu v. Longs Drug Stores (opinion here), Ms. Lu claimed that her supervisor discriminated against her based on her national origin and then retaliated against her after she complained. She further alleged that the abuse caused her to develop anxiety, depression, shingles, and diabetes.
On Ms. Lu’s behalf, her treating physician requested that the employer transfer her away from her supervisor. The employer declined and, ultimately, terminated Ms. Lu after she missed over a year of work to treat for her various disabilities.
EEOC sues over failure to accommodate the Mark of the Beast
Last month, the EEOC announced here that it had sued two companies, claiming that they violated federal law by failing to accommodate an employee’s religious beliefs:
According to the EEOC’s lawsuit, Beverly R. Butcher, Jr. had worked as a general inside laborer at the companies’ mine in Mannington, W.V., for over 35 years when the mining companies required employees to use a newly installed biometric hand scanner to track employee time and attendance. Butcher repeatedly told mining officials that submitting to a biometric hand scanner violated his sincerely held religious beliefs as an Evangelical Christian. He also wrote the mining superintendent and human resources manager a letter explaining the relationship between hand-scanning technology and the Mark of the Beast and antichrist discussed in the Book of Revelation of the New Testament and requesting an exemption from the hand scanning based on his religious beliefs.
NY Court: Indefinite leave may be a reasonable accommodation for disabilities
New York City.
As Jay-Z and Alicia Keys sang, it’s the “concrete jungle where dreams are made of. There’s nothin’ you can’t do.”
That includes taking indefinite leave as a “reasonable” accommodation under the New York City Human Rights Law.
Must an ADA requested accommodation correlate to an essential job function?
To receive the protections of the Americans with Disabilities Act, an individual with a disability must be qualified to perform the essential functions of the job with or without reasonable accommodation. Absent undue hardship, an employer must provide a reasonable accommodation.
So, you’d think that the ADA would require a link between a requested accommodation and an essential job function. Well, not so much according to this recent decision from the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals, a case in which the Attorney General’s office refused to accommodate one of its attorneys who requested a parking spot close to the office.
Noting that the text of the ADA specifically contemplates “making existing facilities used by employees readily accessible to and usable by individuals with disabilities,” without any indication that an accommodation must facilitate the essential functions of one’s position, the Fifth Circuit held that the ADA does not require a nexus between the requested accommodation and the essential functions of the position.
Employee — a grown man for God’s sake — claims he was fired for being a brony
Readers: A brony is a male fan of the children’s television show My Little Pony.
(This is the part where you let everything that you’ve read thus far sink in, as you watch this clip, close your office door, and laugh hysterically. Go ahead. It’s ok).
According to Gawker, the brony posted to Reddit that his co-workers gave him a raft of crap for setting his office computer screensaver to Applejack, a My Little Pony character.
Court destroys my “Ravishing Rick Rude” theory of same-sex harassment
A little over a year ago, I wrote here about a steel worker named Kerry Woods. Unfortunately for Mr. Woods, he was on the receiving end of a constant barrage of “raw homophobic epithets and lewd gestures” from his supervisor. Notwithstanding, the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals tossed out a $500K jury award for Mr. Woods, holding that Mr. Woods’s same-sex sexual harassment claims failed because he failed to satisfy the Supreme Court’s test in Oncale v. Sundowner Offshore Services, Inc..
Oncale was another same-sex harassment case involving employees at an oil rig. In Oncale, the high court held that a jury may infer that same-sex harassment occurred because of sex when the plaintiff can produce:
Court holds that anxiety from possibly getting fired is an ADA disability.
Let me tell you about a teacher in South Dakota. In 2010, she received a letter communicating concerns about her performance. Subsequent evaluations of the teacher’s classes noted several deficiencies. So, the school placed the teacher on a performance improvement plan.
It was right around this time that the teacher met with a physician’s assistant, who diagnosed the teacher with “anxiety and depression, likely stemming from her concerns about possibly getting fired.”
So, at the teacher’s request, the physician’s assistant wrote a letter to the school seeking a laundry list of accommodations, including: