I was skeptical. Yesterday, at 10:17 AM, I received an emailed press release from the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. The federal agency touted “adding a new section [to its existing COVID-19 Technical Guidance] to clarify under what circumstances COVID-19 may be considered a disability under the Americans with Disabilities…
Image Credit: finger pointing by BomSymbols from the Noun Project While nerds like me were flooding LinkedIn with status updates about Sixth Circuit this and OSHA ETS that, the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission was hosting a secret “virtual dialogue” with the employer Illuminati about retaliation updating its COVID-19 Technical…
Image by Dominic Wunderlich from Pixabay On Monday, a Texas federal court dealt with a nuanced issue relating to vaccine mandates. The case is not about the constitutionality or efficacy of vaccine mandates promulgated by the government or private entities. Instead, it focused on an airline’s accommodation policy for employees…
CommunistSquared, CC0, via Wikimedia Commons Greetings from Seattle. Before I begin my day of **checks notes** culture and refinement, I figured I’d blog first about this recent opinion from a federal court in Pennsylvania. It involves an individual — let’s just call him “Plaintiff” — who claimed that his former…
Image Credit: Google Street View While warming up benching 315 lbs. at the gym yesterday, I listened to The Howard Stern Show. And I heard Howard talking about a private school in Florida that — get this — will force students to stay home for 30 days after every COVID-19…
By U.S. Government – Extracted from PDF file here, Public Domain, Link Without any fanfare or press release (sigh), the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission updated its list of frequently asked questions entitled “What You Should Know About COVID-19 and the ADA, the Rehabilitation Act, and Other EEO Laws.” The…
An employer has a policy that permits employees to work remotely one day every two weeks. An employee with a disability (PTSD and anxiety disorders) requests to work remotely twice per week and work weekends to make up for any lost time. That seems like a reasonable accommodation. Or not…
daveynin from United States, CC BY 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons Do you remember that scene in The Shawshank Redemption where Morgan Freeman’s character ‘Red’ is working the checkout line at a local grocery store? After he finishes bagging someone’s items, he looks over at his manager and says, “Restroom break,…
The original uploader was Bando26 at English Wikipedia., CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons I’ve got good news and bad news. There’s good news if you’re still clutching your pearls over some employee suing for failing to accommodate his disability around the start of the pandemic in 2020. If the…
Image by Viktor Ivanchenko from Pixabay Since you asked, sure. If you hung in there with me through the end of yesterday’s post about the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission’s first Americans with Disabilities Act – COVID-19 lawsuit, I casually mentioned that for the first time, the EEOC recognizes that…