Party City to Pay $155,000 to Settle EEOC Disability Discrimination Lawsuit
The EEOC's lawsuit, filed in September 2018, charged that Party City violated federal law by failing to hire a qualified employee with a disability at its Nashua, N.H., location after it became aware that she required a job coach as a reasonable accommodation for her disability.
According to the EEOC's lawsuit, the applicant, who was on the autism spectrum and suffered from severe anxiety, had been receiving services from Easter Seals of New Hampshire to build up her self-confidence, including around working and applying for a job. One of these Easter Seals employees went with her in October 2017 to apply for a sales associate job with Party City. The applicant received a job interview, but when the hiring manager discovered that the woman accompanying her was a job coach, the hiring manager's attitude changed dramatically.
The hiring manager told the job coach that Party City had hired people with disabilities with job coaches in the past and that it had not gone well, and made disparaging comments about those employees. Although both the applicant and the job coach explained to the hiring manager that the applicant had been successful shadowing others in previous retail jobs, the hiring manager was uninterested in either the applicant's abilities or in the limited role the job coach would play, the EEOC said. The hiring manager tried to cut the interview short by telling the job coach in a patronizing tone, "Thank you for bringing her here," while the applicant was still in the room. The hiring manager also stated, in the applicant's presence, that the Party City employee who had encouraged the applicant to apply would hire anyone, and would "even hire an ant."
The Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) prohibits employers from discriminating based on disability and imposes a requirement that employees with disabilities be provided a reasonable accommodation, absent undue hardship on the employer. One of these accommodations can be the use of a job coach.
The EEOC filed its suit in U.S. District Court for the District of New Hampshire in Concord, N.H. (Civil Action No. 1:18-cv-00838-PB), after first attempting to reach a pre-litigation settlement through its conciliation process.
In addition to the monetary relief, the three-year consent decree settling the suit enjoins Party City from discriminating against qualified applicants with job coaches in the future. The decree also requires Party City to revise and improve its reasonable accommodation policy; train human resource employees on the new policy and distribute it to all employees; report to the EEOC on all denials of employment to applicants with job coaches; and provide a notice regarding the decree to employees within the New England region, where the store at issue is located.
This Disability Discrimination Lawsuit Was No Party
Workforce Management
Reasonable accommodations are individualized and must be considered on an individual-by-individual basis.
Longboat seeks dismissal of website lawsuit
YourObserver.com
Joel Price, a blind Daytona Beach man who has sued Longboat Key and dozens of other Florida towns, cities and counties over access to their official websites, has filed at least a dozen more actions since early March.
All take the same basic form as the one he filed against Longboat Key in early March, which specified the town must “update all electronic documents made available to the public to remove barriers in order that individuals with visual disabilities can access the electronic documents to the full extent” of federal law. Price’s suit seeks damages determined at trial, court costs and legal fees. Voicemail messages to Price have not been returned.
Defendants in most of these suits settled, as Manatee County did in 2018: $15,000 in legal fees and $1,000 in damages.
In response to Joel’s lawsuit, lawyers for the town have sought to dismiss the suit, filed March 8 in U.S. District Court for the Middle District of Florida.
In their motion to dismiss the case, the town’s lawyers contend: “No legal duty exists under the current law, and Plaintiff merely alleges that the (town) is liable for failing to comply with voluntary ADA website accessibility guidelines, despite the admitted fact that no regulations have been enacted by the United States Attorney General, through the United States Department of Justice, according to the appropriate rule-making process. Such regulations need to first be created in order for there to be any legal mandate under Title II that those regulations apply to local governmental entities.’’
ANALYSIS: Lawsuits increase, alleging websites are not compliant with ADA
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A new wave of lawsuits is being filed across the country under the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA). The ADA is a federal law passed in 1990 requiring “reasonable accommodations” in “any place of public accommodation” to make them accessible to people with disabilities. Examples of ADA reasonable accommodations are wheelchair ramps and handrails.
Following Supervisor's “Not Working Out” Comment, EEOC Defeats Employer’s Motion For Summary Judgment In ADA Lawsuit
Lexology
Seyfarth Synopsis: A federal district court in Arkansas recently denied an employer’s motion for summary judgment on two EEOC-initiated ADA claims – in EEOC v. Crain Automotive Holdings LLC, No. 4:17-CV-627, 2019 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 62513 (E.D. Ark. Apr. 11, 2019) – for failure to provide a reasonable accommodation and discharge based on disability, following a supervisor’s comments to an employee that “it was not working out” and to take care of herself after the employee’s hospitalization. Id. at *1. For employers and management personnel, this ruling illustrates how courts might find seemingly innocuous comments to be direct evidence of discrimination, thus raising the stakes in ADA litigation initiated by the EEOC.
Case Background
In EEOC v. Crain Automotive Holdings LLC, an employee of Crain who suffered from anxiety, depression, and panic attacks began experiencing chest pains and went to the emergency room, fearing she was having a heart attack. Id. After two days of treatment, she ultimately reported back to work. Upon her return, she began experiencing a panic attack and left work, after she emailed her supervisor. When she returned to work a few days later, she met with two supervisors and was terminated. According to the employee, the supervisors told her that “it was not working out” due to her health problems and that she needed to take care of herself. Id.
The EEOC brought a lawsuit on behalf of the employee alleging that Crain violated the Americans With Disabilities Act, as amended by the Americans with Disabilities Act Amendments Act of 2008 (“ADA”) because it: (1) failed to provide a reasonable accommodation for the employee, and (2) that it discharged her because of her disabilities.
Crain moved for summary judgment on both of the EEOC’s claims, arguing that: (i) the employee was not disabled under the ADA; (ii) even if the employee was disabled, she could not have been fired because of her disability since Crain did not know about it; and (iii) the EEOC had no direct evidence of discrimination, and under the McDonnell-Douglas framework, the disability claim could not survive.
The Court’s Decision
The Court denied Crain’s motion for summary judgment on both of the EEOC’s claims. First, the Court rejected Crain’s argument that the employee was not disabled within meaning of the ADA, noting that she had been diagnosed with anxiety, depression, and panic attacks. Id. at *4-5. Crain supported its position by arguing that she had been able to perform other demanding activities, such as handling her parents’ estates, and further noted that she did not have constant panic attacks. The Court rejected Crain’s position, holding that a reasonable jury could find that the employee was disabled within the meaning of the ADA based on her testimony regarding the difficulty caused by her impairments. Id. at *6.
Crain further argued that even if the employee was disabled, she could not have been fired because of her disability since Crain did not know about it. Id. at *6-7. In response, the EEOC presented the following evidence: on Tuesday, the employee told her supervisor she had experienced chest pains the day before; on Wednesday, the employee told her supervisor she had anxiety, depression, and had suffered a panic attack; on Friday, the employee emailed her supervisor before leaving work, saying “I can’t do this” because she was “still hurting too bad,” and further, she emailed another supervisor explaining that she had had a heart catheterization, which was supported by a doctor’s note attached to that email. Id. at *7. The Court held that taking all these facts as true, a reasonable jury could infer that at the time the employee was fired the following week, Crain knew about her anxiety, depression, and panic attacks.
Finally, Crain argued that the EEOC had no direct evidence of discrimination, and under the McDonnell-Douglas framework, the disability claim could not survive. The Court noted that when the employee met with two supervisors in order to discuss why she had left work early the previous Friday, she was terminated. The employee testified that at this meeting, a supervisor told her that “due to [her] health, it wasn’t going to work out and [she] should take time for [her]self.” Id. at *8. The Court held that this comment was direct evidence of discrimination, as opposed to falling within the categories of “stray remarks in the workplace, statements by non-decision-makers, and statements by decisionmakers unrelated to the decisional process,” which would have precluded the comments from being considered direct evidence of discrimination. Id. at *9 (citation omitted). The Court further held there was no reason to suspect that the suggestion that the employee should take care of her health or take time for herself was made “with the intent of attempting to preserve and promote” her, as she was fired in the same conversation. Id. Accordingly, the Court denied Crain’s motion for summary judgment as to the discriminatory discharge claim.
Turning the EEOC’s failure to accommodate claim, the Court noted that the employee emailed a doctor’s note to a supervisor, and that the doctor’s note stated that she needed three weeks off work. The Court held that because Crain did not follow up whatsoever on the recommendation contained in the doctor’s letter before firing the employee, the EEOC generated a genuine dispute of fact on whether the employee requested an accommodation Accordingly, the Court denied Crain’s motion for summary judgment as to the failure to accommodate claim.
Implications For Employers
This ruling serves as cautionary tale for employers regarding both the handling of employee health issues and comments made by supervisory personnel during terminations. In instances where employees present doctors’ notes, as was the case here, employers must be diligent to review those and properly provide any necessary accommodations.
Further, although the comments made during this employee’s termination – “it wasn’t going to work out” and “[she] should take time for [her]self” may seem innocent in nature – the Court here analyzed those comments in the context of the employee’s condition and recent attendance history, and found that such remarks constituted direct evidence of discrimination. Id. at *8-9. Employers should thus be prudent to educate supervisors and other relevant personnel about carefully selecting their words during termination and disciplinary situations, especially in instances involving health issues.