Rob Mendez coaches the JV football team at Prospect High School in Saratoga, California. He’s also lived his entire life with no arms and no legs. He was born with tetra-amelia syndrome, an extremely rare genetic disorder that prevented their embryonic formation. You can read Rob’s entire (and entirely) compelling story at this ESPN feature story, or watch it in this Jon Hamm-narrated featurette.
During a pre-employment medical examination and drug screen, an applicant tests positive for Alprazolam, the generic form of Xanax (a medication commonly prescribed for anxiety), a fact she had already disclosed during the examination. The doctor performing the medical exam and reviewing the drug screen concludes that the applicant is medically acceptable for work as an intake specialist at an inpatient mental health facility. The employer, however, has other ideas. It withdraws the job offer without providing the applicant any opportunity to discuss the results.
The applicant sues, claiming disability discrimination.
With a couple of important exceptions, an employer can require that employees be up to date on their vaccinations.
The exceptions?
1/ An employee with an ADA disability that prevents him or her from receiving a vaccine may be entitled to an exemption from a mandatory vaccination requirement as a reasonable accommodation.
2/ An employee with a sincerely held religious belief, practice, or observance that prevents him or her from receiving a vaccine may also be entitled to an exemption from a mandatory vaccination requirement as a reasonable accommodation.
Party City has agreed with the EEOC to pay $155,000 to settle an ADA lawsuit the agency filed on behalf of a rejected job applicant on the autism spectrum and suffering from severe anxiety.
According to the lawsuit, the individual had been receiving services from Easter Seals of New Hampshire to build
up her self-confidence, including working and applying
for a job. These services included a job coach.
She was so stressed that even something as simple as her co-workers at Caterpillar Financial Services bouncing stress balls off the ground would trigger her post-traumatic stress disorder.
Jonathan Baum worked as a scheduler for Metro Restoration Services. In late 2014, he began have cardiac problems. Over the course of the next several months, he went to the ER fearing a heart attack, had a heart catheter implanted, had an echocardiogram, and wore a heart monitor. He occasionally also missed work for medical tests and treatments, and sometimes worked remotely. His boss, and the owner of Metro, Patrick Cahill, was aware of all of Baum's medical issues.
Following a work day on which Baum had worked remotely from his home. Cahill fired him. The expressly stated reason: "health issues and doctors' appointments."
The term hysteria comes from the Greek word hysterika, meaning
Uterus. In ancient Greece it was believed that a wandering and discontented
Uterus was blamed for that dreaded female ailment of excessive emotion,
hysteria. The disease's symptoms were believed to be dictated by where
in the body the offending organ roamed. It was not religious belief but
a social belief.
Less than two months after Jessica Mullen's hysterectomy, she applied for a position as a stitcher with athletic footwear manufacturer New Balance. Within the first few weeks of her employment, her was having difficulty mastering one of the stitching machines, which led to an abrupt and (maybe) heated exchange with her trainer, Julie Prentiss. During that exchange, Mullen became upset and began to cry. Prentiss placed Mullen in a time-out in the break room, and contacted two human resources managers, Frances Fisher and Rachel Merry.
A call center employee, suffering from Crohn's Disease, asks his manager for some flexibility in the company's break schedules or other accommodations for his bathroom needs. Instead, his supervisor accuses him of stealing time and fires him.
Or at least that's what Nicolas Stover claims happened to him at a Kentucky Amazon call center.
Does an employer have an obligation to return an employee to work following an extended unpaid leave of absence granted as a reasonable accommodation under the ADA?
You might be inclined to say, "Of course." The answer, however, is nuanced, and depends on the length of the leave, the composition of your workforce at the time the employee seeks to return to work, and your efforts to engage in the ADA's interactive process with the employee during the leave.
Friday night, the Hyman clan carried out our annual holiday tradition of watching "Elf." Since much of the story took place in and around various workplaces, this year I decided to watch with an eye towards shareable employment law lessons.
Early in the story, Buddy learns the harsh reality that he is not actually an elf, but a human. He learns this lesson after falling 985 Etch A Sketches short of his production expectations, and being transferred to Jack-in-the-Box testing (the job reserved for "special" elves).
Assuming that Buddy's height is a disability in the North Pole (and if the ADA protects dwarfs down south, it's safe to assume the North Pole's disability discrimination laws would similarly protect Buddy's heightened height up north), what ADA lessons does this parable teach us?
A local mayor has gotten himself in some hot water for his selective use of pre-employment medical examinations for hirees. How selective? According to WKYC, one woman claims that the mayor required her and other women, but not men, to be examined by his personal doctor. For his part, the mayor denies the allegations as an act of a "fertile imagination," and claims that he sends all city workers, male and female, to the same doctor for pre-employment exams.
Why would her allegations rise to the level of unlawful activity?
Tony Gunter worked as a press operator for Bemis, Inc., printing graphics for the outside of Huggies diapers. In January 2013, he injured his right shoulder on the job, continued to work for the next seven months, and ultimately opted for surgery when his ongoing physical therapy did not cure the injury.
He returned to his press operator job in December 2013 with temporary restrictions: no reaching with his right arm and no performing overhead work.
The EEOC has sued Walmart on behalf of a woman who claims the retailer failed to hire her for a stocker job after it learned that she born without a right hand.
The ceremony was to start at 11 am, and by 10:55 I was nervous. Not your normal, "I'm about to get married" nervous, but the, "What the hell, we start in 5 minutes and my bride-to-be isn't here yet" nervous. With no cell phone on me, I just had to have faith that Colleen was on her way. Nevertheless, I was most definitely jittery.
With of all of the attention the #MeToo Movement has provided sexual harassment, employers must not forget that all forms of unlawful workplace discrimination include unlawful harassment.