An Ohio manufacturer has paid $120,000 to settle sex and disability claims with allegations of unlawful discrimination relating to an individual’s caregiver responsibilities. According to the EEOC’s press release, the EEOC had alleged in its 2010 lawsuit that The Timken Company had denied a part time employee a full time position because she was the mother of a disabled child and that one or more managers believed that the woman would be unable to work full time and care for her child.

The EEOC had alleged that the company had hired men with disabled children as full time employees and had discriminated against the part time employee due to her association with her disabled child.

In 2007, the EEOC had issued enforcement guidance on the “Unlawful Disparate Treatment of Workers with Caregiving Responsibilities.” The EEOC stated then that the guidance was “not intended to create a new protected category but rather to illustrate circumstances in which stereotyping or other forms of disparate treatment may violate Title VII or the prohibition under the ADA against discrimination based on a worker’s association with an individual with a disability.” The allegations underlying the EEOC’s allegations against The Timken Company seem to track its guidance fairly closely.

The two year consent decree also required the company to provide anti-discrimination training to its managers, supervisors and employees at the facility where the incident occurred, post a notice and provide periodic reports to the EEOC on its hiring practices.