Fortunately, the COVID-19 pandemic is waning. Yet, past workplace incidents are now surfacing in court as COVID-19 discrimination lawsuits. A common thread with many of these lawsuits is an employee with COVID-19 who gets fired and claims disability discrimination. That begs the question: when is COVID-19 a disability under the…
The Americans with Disabilities Act has strict rules about the scope and manner of disability-related inquiries and medical examinations of workers. For example, do you remember that post last week about the forklift operator on opioids? He presented doctor’s notes to his employer to confirm that he would not present…
And that’s just the tip of the iceberg in this blistering (albeit, PG-rated) 58-page dissent to yesterday’s non-precedential Fifth Circuit decision, in which the majority concluded that a private company’s workplace vaccine mandate could irreparably harm individuals with disabilities and strong religious beliefs. So, orgies, eh? That’s nothing. Check out…
Proving that the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission doesn’t just enforce anti-discrimination laws on behalf of the “little guy,” the EEOC announced on Monday that it had recovered $250,000 from a company that allegedly terminated its former CFO because of his disability. Yes, that’s when it happened. Or, at least…
You get a jury trial on an Americans with Disabilities Act claim. Paging Doctor HR! Last night, I read a 38-page federal court decision with a fact pattern that, unfortunately, sounds all-too-familiar. The plaintiff applies for a position as a forklift operator — a position he has held…
People ask me if I like to read. Not so much anymore, outside of reading Harry Potter books to my kids and reading graphic novels (ok, fine, comic books) to me. Social media apps like LinkedIn have eroded my attention span. I can barely make it through a few hundred…
Print this post if you want to discourage your managers and supervisor from putting dumb sh*t in emails that might one day get shown to a jury and end up costing your business a mint. Last night, I read this opinion from a federal judge in Wisconsin. It’s about an…
In 2020, the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission sued two employers for terminating a title clerk working at their automobile dealership allegedly over fears that she might have cancer. According to the lawsuit, the employee had missed several days of work due to a sudden illness and then informed management that…
Yesterday, several news outlets reported that Supreme Court Justice Stephen Breyer will retire at the end of this term. President Bill Clinton appointed Justice Breyer in 1994. Justice Breyer sided with OSHA and HHS in the vaccine mandate cases earlier this month. Indeed, Breyer is considered one of the more…
Here’s a reminder that the duty to accommodate an employee under the Americans with Disabilities Act neither requires providing the employee’s preferred accommodation nor an accommodation that is 100% successful. Instead, it’s about doing what’s reasonable based on the information available at the time. I’ll explain. Here is a recent…