Job Description Mistakes You Don’t Want to Make
HR Law 101 Ep.4: What You Need to Know About Creating Effective Job Descriptions
A federal appeals court recently clarified that an employee may qualify for a reasonable accommodation under the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) even if they can perform essential job functions without such an...more
In a decision issued on March 25, 2025, the Second Circuit Court of Appeals clarified the scope of protections under the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) regarding workplace accommodations....more
The Americans with Disabilities Act defines a protected qualified individual as one who can perform the essential functions of the job, with or without reasonable accommodations. ...more
On October 17, 2024, the U.S. District Court for the District of Kansas entered summary judgment in favor of the Unified Government of Wyandotte County/Kansas City, Kansas, as representative of the Kansas City Board of Public...more
A school district in Texas recently prevailed in a failure-to-hire lawsuit when the court ruled that a legally blind applicant for a teaching position could not demonstrate that she’d have been able to manage student...more
This month, the California Court of Appeals affirmed the trial court’s grant of summary adjudication to the employer in a disability discrimination case alleging violations of the Fair Employment and Housing Act (FEHA). The...more
During the COVID-19 pandemic, we saw a number of federal court decisions involving disability discrimination claims from teachers who requested full-time remote work as an accommodation for compromised immune systems or other...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
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
Your job descriptions may be more important than you think, and what better time to review and update them than the start of the new year? In this blog, we discuss why job descriptions are important and the things to consider...more
The federal appeals court in Chicago has provided helpful guidance on employers’ obligation to accommodate qualified individuals’ medical restrictions under the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) in a case involving a...more
On August 15, 2022, the New Jersey Appellate Division declined to reinstate a disability bias class action brought by a New Jersey Transit train operator who was required undergo a sleep apnea screening due to the...more
Under the Americans with Disabilities Act, if an employee with a disability requests accommodation, the employer must work with that person to determine if there are reasonable measures that can be taken that allow the...more
Seyfarth Synopsis: Athleisure company is rightfully able to terminate the employment of individual with physical limitations, despite that individual’s ability to delegate such functions of her position. See Tonyan v....more
On February 24, 2020, the U.S. District Court for the Middle District of North Carolina issued an opinion in Brown v. Martin Marietta Materials, Inc. regarding disability discrimination, reasonable accommodations, and...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
From time to time, we encounter requests from employees for accommodations under the Americans with Disabilities Act that appear unrelated to the employee’s underlying medical condition. For example, an employee with a back...more
A North Carolina federal trial court recently denied an employer’s request to dismiss a former employee’s disability discrimination and retaliation claims under the Americans with Disabilities Act (“ADA”). The case provides a...more
On December 6, 2019, the New Jersey Appellate Division in V. L. v. Hunterdon Healthcare et. al., reversed and remanded a trial court’s order dismissing an employee’s claims of disability discrimination and retaliatory...more
If asked to describe the essential functions of a given job, most employers would include actually showing up to work as a critical component. In recent years the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission has taken the position...more
On October 29, 2019, a panel of Seventh Circuit Appellate Court Judges held that the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) does not cover alleged discrimination based on future impairments. Shell v. Burlington N. Santa Fe Ry....more
Under the Americans with Disabilities Act (“ADA”), an employee is entitled to a reasonable accommodation if the employee has a disability and is a “qualified individual,” meaning that the employee can perform the essential...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
Since Congress passed the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) in 1990 and state legislatures enacted their own protections requiring employers to accommodate disabled workers, courts have grappled with the reasonableness of...more