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The company told the plaintiff he was being terminated because it “feared that he had contracted swine flu while in Mexico for his sister’s funeral.” For a time, swine flu had been declared a public health emergency and medical authorities feared the worst. We now know that the swine flu hospitality and mortality profile is very similar…

The House passed a bill striking the word ‘lunatic’ from federal laws. The Senate had previously passed a similar bill.

According to the New York Times, the word derives from the Latin word for moon and stems from the “ancient beliefs that people could become ‘moonstruck’ by lunar movements.” Mental health groups supported the bill…

An employer’s email to a “no call/no show” employee asking “what is going on” is not a “medical inquiry” under the ADA, according to the 7th Circuit.eeoc v. Thrivent Financial for Lutherans (7th Cir. Nov. 20. 2012). 

The Court rejected the EEOC’s argument that the word “inquiries” in the “Medical Examinations and Inquiries” section…

Add another multi-million dollar settlement notch to the EEOC’s “inflexible leave” belt. The EEOC announced that national trucking company Interstate Distributor Company will pay $4.85 million to resolve a nationwide class disability discrimination lawsuit the EEOC had brought against Interstate.

The lawsuit alleged that Interstate had a policy of terminating employees who needed more than…

When an employee cannot perform the essential functions of his or her position, with or without an accommodation due to a disability, an employer must consider “the accommodation of last resort”—transfer to a vacant lateral or lower position for which the employee is qualified.

Circuit courts had been evenly divided on whether an individual with…

We posted recently about an Eighth Circuit decision in which the court held that rotating shifts was an essential function because “[i]f [plaintiff] were switched to a straight day shift and not required to work the rotating shift, then other Resource Coordinators would have to work more night and weekend shifts.”
 
Another court has…

Recall our post concerning the claims of the acrophobic bridge worker and incontinent court reporter that rotating through job assignments was not an essential function of their jobs.    Now comes a “Resource Coordinator” seeking a straight day shift as an accommodation to her disability and claims that working rotating shifts is not an essential function…

The question frustrating employers for decades remains: how much leave, beyond FMLA and employer policies, must an employer give a disabled employee as a reasonable accommodation under the ADA? More than a year after the EEOC hosted a public hearing on this topic, raising hopes that guidance may be forthcoming, only to have those hopes dampened…

The extent of an employer’s obligation to extend leave and excuse absences as a reasonable accommodation under the ADA is perhaps the most vexing ADA issue for employers. In June 2011, the EEOC held a public hearing on leave as a reasonable accommodation, and suggested it might issue guidance on the topic in 2011. When…