Metro Airport settles disability lawsuit
Lansing State Journal
The Wayne County Airport Authority has settled a lawsuit with advocates for the disabled and elderly over relocating public transportation services at Detroit Metropolitan Airport.
Airport officials said Friday that the pickup and drop-off location for shuttles and buses will remain at the ground transportation center, where it moved last month. But the authority has agreed to reconfigure parking positions, improve signs and shelters and provide a phone for passenger assistance.
The federal lawsuit said the change violated the Americans with Disabilities Act by forcing transportation companies to load passengers in an inaccessible area.
An attorney for the advocates says in the airport statement that the agreement boosts safety, convenience and accessibility for everyone.
The airport is located in the Detroit suburb of Romulus.
Employers Should Not Just Be Bold, But Smart, When Dealing With Ebola
JD Supra
Tensions are high concerning the potential spread of the Ebola virus disease in the U.S., fueled by the confirmation of new infections, around-the-clock news reports on potential calamities and our natural, and seemingly universal, fear of the unknown.
In light of the heightened threat of Ebola, employers must ensure that they are providing a healthy and safe environment for all employees. However, employers also need to be aware of their responsibilities under several employment-related laws, which may seem, at first, to be roadblocks. We believe the following laws are the most obvious:
Hairdresser at Nursing Home Will Get Trial On ADA Claims About Pushing Wheelchairs
Bloomberg BNA
An Illinois nursing home may have denied a hairdresser reasonable accommodation under the Americans with Disabilities Act after she had surgery and could no longer push residents in wheelchairs to the facility's salon, a federal appeals court ruled Oct. 16.
Reviving Debra Kauffman's claim, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit agreed that she raised a triable question about whether the ability to wheel nonambulatory residents to the salon was an essential function of her job as a hairdresser. It reversed a summary judgment in favor of the nursing home, Mason Point in Sullivan, Ill., and remanded the case for trial.
The appeals court, however, divided over the specifics of the ADA's “essential job function” analysis. Judge Richard A. Posner, joined by Judge Diane P. Wood, suggested that if the small amount of time that Kauffman estimated she spent wheeling residents each week was close to accurate, that might indicate the activity isn't an essential part of a hairdresser's job and those duties could be done by an orderly or other employee at a low cost to Mason Point. According to the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, such “[j]ob restructuring is one of the accommodations that an employer must consider,” Posner wrote.
Wheeling patients wasn't an essential aspect of Kauffman's job “if it was so small a part that it could be reassigned to other employees at a negligible cost to the employer,” the Seventh Circuit said.
But in a separate concurring opinion, Judge Daniel A. Manion stressed that although the amount of time an employee spends on a task and the cost to the employer of reassigning the task must be considered in determining whether a job function is essential, they're not “dispositive” factors. He also said the ADA doesn't require an employer to “reassign an essential job function to another employee.”
1. In Addressing Handicap Parking, Questions Arise Of Compliance For Businesses
Roselle Park News
Handicap parking requirements in New Jersey – which are a combination of New Jersey Statues and federal Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) Standards for Accessible Design – require a set number of handicap accessible parking spaces dependent on the total number of parking spaces in a lot.
1. "How Can We Accommodate You"
Mondaq News Alerts
A recent post of ours dealt with a new decision from an Illinois federal court which held that the employer had enough facts about an employee and her condition to infer an “implicit” request for an accommodation and a need to engage in the “interactive process.”
This led us to ask: Does an employee who needs an accommodation for a disabling condition actually have to request it, or can/should/must the employer infer such a request from the circumstances of the case?
We think that these questions need a thorough discussion with experts in the field, and so we published some good reader comments.
Here are two more incisive comments:
Geoffrey Mort, an employment Lawyer in NYC:
“This is a troubling but important question. Many employees with disabilities who are having trouble at work and could benefit from a reasonable accommodation have no idea that they are entitled to request one. I’ve handled several matters where an employee who was likely disabled under the amended ADA talked to HR and others in the workplace about their problems handling certain assignments, but didn’t know about reasonable accommodations and thus didn’t ask for one.
It’s not realistic to expect such employees to know the law or consult a lawyer, and courts should recognize that in some situations there can be implied requests for an accommodation that trigger the responsibility to begin an interactive process about what can help the employee capably perform his/her duties.”
Kerry Rieder-McLaughlin, an HR consultant in Montgomery, Illinois:
“In situations where someone has an obvious disability, i.e., pregnant, in a wheelchair or obviously has trouble seeing, it is safe for the employer to ask if the employee would require an accommodation to make doing their job more comfortable, etc. In addition, as the NLRB noted, if the employer has enough information that they should have known that a disability existed then they can begin that discussion as well.
I strongly urge against employers becoming mindreaders, however, and encourage them not to ask someone if they have a disability when they only have suspicion of one. I believe that employees with disabilities are savvy enough to know what their rights are and what they need in order to perform the essential functions of a job they are qualified for, whether it is a magnifying glass, an additional break, or an ergonomic workspace.”
1. Internet Use and Addiction as a Disability
Workforce Management (blog)
The more the Internet becomes entrenched in our lives, the greater the likelihood that employees will begin embracing ideas such as Internet addiction as a disability and the need for employers to consider and provide reasonable accommodations.