Overlawyered: Chronicling The High Cost Of Our Legal System

Posts Tagged ‘disabled rights’

Say what?

Pay up, EEOC tells a cafe owner, for not taking on a hearing- and speech-impaired applicant for a cashier’s position [EEOC press release (Albuquerque’s Savory Fare Bakery and Cafe agrees to pay $20,000 and offer other relief), h/t Roger Clegg; related on cases where concern about cross-intelligibility between employee and customers leads to charges of “accent discrimination”] (& Bader, CEI; Scott Greenfield)

More: Alexander Cohen at Atlas has the complaint and answer, along with further analysis.

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Employee “loses track of time” due to disability

Trying to let the mentally disabled employee go from its store in Woodland, Calif., though, proved costly to retailer Target Corp., which has agreed to pay $275,000 to extricate itself from her wrongful termination claim under the Americans with Disabilities Act. [Sacramento Bee] The worker had found employment at Target with the assistance of a nonprofit organization that works with mentally disabled workers, and which had supplied her with a “job coach.” It remains to be seen whether employers like Target will continue to accept such placements with enthusiasm as the perceived legal risks of doing so keep rising.

P.S. Thanks to commenters for drawing out this point: yes, Target’s ultra-stringent employee discipline policy for failure to take timely lunch breaks does look like a lawyer-driven adaptation to its high legal exposure (especially in California) to class action suits claiming that employers permitted work during designated breaks. See, for example, this post and this one. Note that in each case the company feels constrained to fire the workers because they are putting in too much work, not too little.

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Disabled rights roundup

  • On party-line vote, Sacramento Dems turn down bill to curb ADA access shakedown suits [ATRF, KABC, Sacramento Bee (auto-plays video ad)]
  • Illinois sues local schools for not developing standards for disabled athletic competition [Chicago Tribune]
  • Open secret: criminals exploit federally mandated IP Relay disabled-phone system [Henderson]
  • Judge certifies nationwide ADA accessibility suit against Hollister over stepped entrances to its stores [Law Week Colorado via Disability Law]
  • In settlement, AMC movie chain agrees to install captioning, audio-description at Illinois theaters [ABC Chicago]
  • “Has the Expanded Definition of Disability under the ADAA Gone Too Far?” [Russell Cawyer]
  • “Fake handicaps a growing problem for disabled sports” [Der Spiegel]

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International law roundup

  • U.N. rapporteur lectures U.S. on Indian rights, calls for “some form of land restoration” [IPSNews] “So, the UN Wants the U.S. to Return Land to Indian Tribes…” [Claudia Rosett] In Chapters 10 and 11 of Schools for Misrule, I discuss the growing cooperation between Indian land-claim activists in this country and international organizations both within and without of the U.N. system. (More: I expand theme into a Daily Caller piece).
  • “Union Uses NAFTA To Fight Alabama Immigration Law” [Sean Higgins, IBD]
  • “UN hunger expert investigates Canada” [Hillel Neuer, National Post]”Everyone’s grievances can thus be transformed into human rights violations” [Jacob Mchangama and Aaron Rhodes, Freedom Rights Project, PDF]
  • Admittedly, at a “lefty Quaker school in the Northeast”: “You know international law is getting some traction when your fourth-grader is being taught about the Convention on the Rights of the Child.” [Peter Spiro, OJ]
  • New Third Circuit opinion in remanded U.S. v. Bond case, which tested limits of treaty power, could tee up issue for another SCOTUS outing [Spiro/OJ, FedSoc Blog, Liberty and Law; earlier]
  • “Canada’s Much Better and Very Different Alien Tort Statute” [Ku/OJ]
  • Implementation of United Nations’ Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (CRPD) could draw inspiration from U.S. experience with institutional reform lawsuits [Michael Perlin via Bagenstos]

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FMLA leave meets ADA “reasonable accommodation”

The intersection of the Americans with Disabilities Act’s “reasonable accommodation” mandate with the Family and Medical Leave Act’s mandate of unpaid time off for illness has long posed a head-scratcher for employers. The EEOC is planning to issue clarifying guidelines on leave-as-accommodation, but organized employers fear the commission’s very liberal leadership may be working up new and extra-onerous legal interpretations. [Bloomberg Business Week; EEOC; Susan Lessack, Pepper Hamilton; Marie Larsen, Recruiter.com]

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Labor and employment law roundup

  • Arbitrator: felonious Montgomery County, Maryland cops should keep disability pay [Examiner] “Cop who took naked photos of rape victim can keep pension” [NY Post] Cop who pepper-sprayed UC Davis protesters is still on job, and maybe that’s how they’d have it [Radley Balko]
  • “Billions in retroactive liability” in pharma detailer wage/hour action before SCOTUS [Marcia Coyle, NLJ] And USA Today chose a faulty “worker discontent” theme on wage/hour case, since as class actions these suits are lawyer-driven;
  • Australia: “Worker injured during sex gets compensation payout” [News.com.au]
  • “Courts are finally starting to apply ADAAA—and it ain’t pretty” [Jon Hyman] ADA: “Judge Rules In Favor of Fired Employee With Bipolar Disorder” [ABC]
  • NLRB goes after Hyatt on employee handbook language [Gary Shapiro, Examiner] Union claims Indiana right-to-work law violates Thirteenth Amendment ban on slavery [James Sherk, NRO]
  • EEOC: sex discrimination law bars bias against transgender employees [AP, Hyman] “EEOC Obtains Substantial Settlement in Obesity Discrimination Suit” [Disabilities Law]
  • Law journal prediction: adherents of racism will claim Title VII protection [Lawrence D. Rosenthal, Temple L. Rev. via Workplace Prof]

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EEOC: Employers have no right to ask what prescription drugs employees are on

Even if they’re operating heavy machinery, and even if the drugs are of the type that make users drowsy, twitchy or agitated. It’s all part of the ban on employee medical inquiries under the Americans with Disabilities Act, and the Eighth Circuit has backed up the agency’s position that questions do not become permissible until the employer has in hand objective evidence of impairment, the sort you can take to a judge. Evidence like, you know, there having been a serious accident. I explain at Cato at Liberty.

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“Ex-Worker Sues City Over Service Dog For Paprika Allergy”

“A former city worker is suing Indianapolis after she claims the city failed to accommodate the service dog she needs due to her severe allergy to paprika.” The city had already removed certain foods from its vending machines but declined to accept a service dog as reasonable accommodation under the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) because a co-worker was allergic to dogs. [WRTV]

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