Job Description Mistakes You Don’t Want to Make
HR Law 101 Ep.4: What You Need to Know About Creating Effective Job Descriptions
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
Many employers have experienced an increase in employee requests for accommodations in the past few years. A federal jury’s recent award in Lisa Menninger v. PPD Development L.P. reminds employers that accommodation requests,...more
In order to claim discrimination under the Americans with Disabilities Act, employees must demonstrate that they could perform the essential functions of the job but were denied a reasonable accommodation. Some employers...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
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
On April 1, 2019, the United States District Court for the Northern District of Illinois denied summary judgment in an Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) case, determining that occasionally excusing employees from...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
Seyfarth Synopsis: The D.C. Circuit recently revived a single-leg amputee’s claim that his former employer failed to accommodate his disability by refusing his request for a classroom aide....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
There has been a burst of recent Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) decisions from around the country that can teach valuable lessons to employers. Last month, we looked at three cases examining the question of whether an...more
Recently, the United States Court of Appeals for the First Circuit, in Sepulveda-Vargas v. Caribbean Restaurants, LLC, affirmed a lower court’s decision in favor of the employer in a lawsuit alleging violations of the...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
Q: One of our employees has been exhibiting strange, erratic behavior at work. Can we require the employee to submit to a mental health examination? A: Possibly. The ADA prohibits employers from requiring their workers to...more
On October 16, 2017, the Supreme Court rejected an employee’s petition for review of a decision in Stevens v Rite Aid Corporation. Stevens sued under the Americans with Disabilities Act (“ADA”) for alleged discriminatory...more
Employers continue to face disability discrimination claims from employees who argue that their medical conditions give them a right to work from home as a reasonable accommodation under the Americans with Disabilities Act...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
Seyfarth Synopsis: In a recent win for employers, the Fifth Circuit clarified that opened-ended or unlimited requests to work from home are unreasonable under the Americans with Disabilities Act (“ADA”) and may be rejected...more
Many employers offer light duty programs to employees who are temporarily disabled. Reasonable accommodation obligations imposed by California’s Fair Employment and Housing Act (FEHA) may come into play when administering...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
A recent Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals case provides employers with a great example of how to evaluate accommodation requests under the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA). In EEOC v. Ford Motor Co., a case which...more