Job Description Mistakes You Don’t Want to Make
HR Law 101 Ep.4: What You Need to Know About Creating Effective Job Descriptions
During the COVID-19 pandemic and afterwards, employers have faced a growing number of requests for remote work arrangements based on a medical disability. The Americans with Disabilities Act requires employers to grant...more
Seyfarth Synopsis: The Tenth Circuit Court of Appeals reversed a summary judgment award on an employee’s failure-to-accommodate claim. The Court’s decision focused on the employer’s improperly narrow delineation of the...more
On September 15, 2021, the Tenth Circuit Court of Appeals upheld a district court’s grant of summary judgment in favor of an employer. In Brown v. Austin, the Tenth Circuit found that an employee’s telework, weekend work, and...more
An employer’s past leniency in applying and enforcing its attendance policy did not contradict the employer’s later position that regular worksite attendance was required for employment, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the...more
Heeding the adage “no one knows what the future may hold,” the Seventh, Eighth and Eleventh Circuits have uniformly refused to extend protections of the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) to employees with a perceived risk...more
The Sixth Circuit previously explained in Hostettler v. College of Wooster, 895 F.3d 844 (6th Cir. 2018) that regular, in-person attendance is not a per se essential function of every job. Rather, employers must tie...more
Employers in Ontario will likely welcome the decision in Katz et al. v. Clarke, 2019 ONSC 2188 (Divisional Court), which addressed the scope of the duty to accommodate in the event of an employee’s permanent disability. ...more
It was a close call, but a court recently denied an employee’s Americans with Disabilities Act claim that her employer had improperly refused a request to continue working from home as an accommodation. With the growth of...more
Seyfarth Synopsis: In a 2-1 decision in Bilinsky v American Airlines, Inc., 2019 WL 2610944 (7th Cir. June 26, 2019), the Seventh Circuit recently affirmed American Airlines’ summary judgment win against a former employee who...more
Recently, the United States Eighth Circuit Court of Appeals reaffirmed that regular and reliable attendance is an essential function of most jobs under the Americans with Disabilities Act (“ADA”). Lipp v. Cargill Meat...more
Seyfarth Synopsis: A recent case from the Western District of North Carolina contains a helpful example of how the standards applicable to an employee’s request for accommodation of a disability differ from those for...more
Recent decisions from the Second, Fifth, and Eighth Circuit Courts of Appeals exemplify the growing consensus amongst courts that even employees with a disability are generally required to comply with company attendance...more
Just a few months ago, we wrote about a case where a federal district court denied summary judgment to an employer who had asserted that attendance at work was an essential job function. The Court held that although regular...more
In Cotto v. Ardagh Glass Packing, Inc., 2018 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 135194 (D.N.J. Aug. 10, 2018), a case of first impression, the federal district court held that neither New Jersey’s Law Against Discrimination (LAD) nor...more
In recent years, particularly with technology making it easier for employees to work remotely, courts have struggled to determine whether onsite attendance is an essential job function under the Americans with Disabilities...more
The Southern District Court of California, in Ruiz v. ParadigmWorks Group, Inc., held that an employer was not at fault for failing to grant an employee’s request for multiple medical leaves of absence where the employee was...more
Despite the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission’s more nuanced position, federal courts have generally rejected attempts by plaintiffs to claim that an indefinite leave of absence is a required reasonable accommodation...more
On July 17, 2017, the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court issued a unanimous ruling in Barbuto v. Advantage Sales and Marketing, LLC, allowing medical marijuana users to assert claims for handicap discrimination under the...more
On March 15, 2017, in Moss v. Harris County Constable Precinct One, the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals reaffirmed that an employer is not required to accommodate an employee who is requesting indefinite leave as a reasonable...more
One of the most troubling issues faced by human resource professionals is how to address an employee with a disability that impacts their ability to report for work. A good example is an employee who suffers from episodes of...more
Employers can easily feel overwhelmed when it comes to enforcing employee attendance standards while providing reasonable accommodation to employees with chronic health conditions. Increasingly, however, court decisions such...more
The Americans with Disabilities Act prohibits employers from refusing to hire qualified individuals with a disability on the basis of their condition, if they can perform the essential functions of the job with or without...more
The importance of having accurate job descriptions for employees was illustrated by a recent case. In that case, the employee was let go by an employer after suffering a non-work related injury that the employer believed...more