American Woodmark Sued by EEOC for Disability Discrimination
American Woodmark Corporation, a wood cabinetry manufacturer, violated federal law when it denied a quality auditor in its Jackson, Georgia manufacturing plant a reasonable accommodation for her epilepsy, migraines, and heart condition, then fired her because of her disabilities and in retaliation for requesting two days of unpaid leave, the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) charged in a lawsuit.
According to the EEOC's suit, American Woodmark denied the employee's request for two days of unpaid leave to treat symptoms related to her disabilities. Instead, American Woodmark assessed attendance infraction points to the employee under its rigid attendance policy. They then fired her for exceeding the permissible number of attendance points, despite her providing a doctor's note and updated Family Medical Leave Act forms proving she was absent for purposes of treatment and recovery relating to her disabilities.
Such alleged conduct violates the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA), which prohibits employers from making employment decisions based on an individual's disability. The EEOC filed suit (Civil Action No. 5:19-cv-00381-TES) in U.S. District Court for the Middle District of Georgia, Macon Division, after first attempting to reach a pre-litigation settlement via its voluntary conciliation process. The EEOC is seeking back pay, front pay, compensatory, and punitive damages for the employee, as well as injunctive relief to prevent future discrimination.
"The use of intermittent medical leave for treatment of a medical condition deemed to be a disability under the ADA is widely recognized as a reasonable accommodation," said Antonette Sewell, regional attorney for the EEOC's Atlanta District Office. "Here, the employee's request could easily have been granted, but American Woodmark failed to effectively engage in the interactive process and fired her, a 16-year employee of the company, instead of accommodating her."
Darrell E. Graham, district director of the Atlanta office, said, "The EEOC is committed to ending disability discrimination in Georgia and across the country. An employee should not be forced to risk termination for seeking medical leave as a reasonable accommodation under the ADA."
Employer's maximum leave policy violated ADA, EEOC says
Dive Brief:
- A Delaware company that provides services to correctional facilities and other state institutions will pay $550,000 to settle a disability bias lawsuit filed by the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC), the agency announced.
- Connections CSP allegedly fired employees with disabilities who needed additional unpaid leave beyond the 12 weeks provided by the Family and Medical Leave Act (FMLA). It also, according to EEOC, failed to provide other requested reasonable accommodations, such as reassignment to vacant positions, that would have allowed these workers to stay on the job. Instead, it allegedly placed them on FMLA leave and terminated them when their leaves expired.
- In addition to the monetary relief, which will be distributed to five former employees, the three-year consent decree resolving the suit requires Connections to implement a new reasonable accommodation policy; provide training on the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA), its reasonable accommodation policy and other federal anti-discrimination laws; and post a notice regarding the settlement.
Dive Insight:
The EEOC's position, summed up by Jamie R. Williamson, director of EEOC's Philadelphia District Office, in announcing the settlement, is that "rigid maximum leave policies can be a barrier to the employment of workers with disabilities." While the FMLA requires only 12 weeks of leave, the ADA may sometimes require that additional leave be granted as a reasonable accommodation, according to EEOC and case law.
Several other employers have entered into similar settlement agreements in recent years. In 2017, UPS paid $1.7 million to resolve a lawsuit challenging its 12-month leave policy, and a Las Vegas gaming company paid $3.5 million in 2018 to settle a lawsuit relating to its "100% healed" policy. Employers are required to modify policies that limit the amount of leave employees can take if a worker needs additional leave as a reasonable accommodation, according to the EEOC's Employer-Provided Leave and the Americans with Disabilities Act guidance.
An employer must consider unpaid leave for a worker with a disability as a reasonable accommodation if the employee needs it, assuming this accommodation does not pose an undue hardship to the employer, experts say. This is true even if the worker has exhausted his or her leave, including workers' comp leave, FMLA or comparable leave under local or state law, EEOC has said. The agency has made clear, however, that the law does not require an employer to provide additional paid leave beyond what it already provides as part of its paid leave policy.
No-fault Attendance Policies Offer No Cover When the ADA or FMLA Are Involved
An employee suffering from epilepsy, migraines and heart condition asks (with a medical note) for two unpaid days off from work to treat symptoms related to her disabilities.
Instead of granting the leave, the employer assigns the employee points under its no-fault attendance policy and fires her for exceeding the allowable number of attendance points. The EEOC has sued the employer, alleging disability discrimination.
A no-fault attendance policy assigns points each time an employee is absent, with corresponding levels of progressive discipline automatically imposed at certain point levels. Employers like these policies because they simplify attendance issues.
These policies, however, carry, a certain degree of risk — namely in the handling of absences protected by the FMLA or ADA. If the FMLA or ADA protects an employee’s absence from work, an employer would violate the statute by counting the absence as part of a no-fault attendance policy. And, in this case (assuming the medical note is legit), and for this reason, it appears this employer has a big problem with the EEOC.
On a more basic level, where’s the humanity in denying two days off for an employee to deal with medical symptoms, especially when the request is accompanied by a doctor’s note?
The ADA requires reasonable accommodations. Unless the employee is a serial abuser of unpaid days off, it’s hard to imagine a situation in which two days is not a reasonable request.
Beyoncé Was Sued Over Her Website Violating the Americans With Disabilities Act. And You Could Be Too
Defendant in a class-action lawsuit alleging that it violated the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA). The suit, filed by a blind woman from New York, claimed that the company’s website, Beyonce.com, did not provide accommodation for people with significant vision impairments, leaving an estimated 2 million blind people and others with vision impairments unable to access the primary portal for news about all things Bey.
Parkwood is far from alone. The ADA has been law for decades—it turns 30 in 2020—but it’s spurring a new wave of digital-era lawsuits. The civil rights law applies to businesses with 15 or more employees, including state and local governments, and also applies to places of public accommodation. According to calculations by the Chicago-based law firm Seyfarth Shaw, the first half of 2019 saw a 12% increase in ADA Title III lawsuits filed in federal court over the same time period in 2018 (5,592 vs. 4,965). The reason: Digital assets, primarily websites that are meant to serve the public, don't always offer accessibility features for people with disabilities.
“Quite frankly, it’s become a cottage industry among plaintiffs' attorneys," says Thomas Barton, an employment attorney at law firm Drinker Biddle & Reath LLP’s Philadelphia office. "They will send out demand letters based on a publicly available website where they can run a pretty rudimentary test. It's almost never 100% compliant, even if the business makes attempts to make it compliant,” And the risk extends beyond websites to possibly include all digital assets—everything from email correspondence and social media to internal portals and even video games.
New Rules for Service Animals on Planes Are (Finally) Taking Shape
The Department of Transportation announced this summer that it will issue new guidelines governing service animals on planes. The agency published a list of enforcement priorities, which offer insight into how it will structure rules around this growing issue.
And a growing issue, it is. Airlines for America (A4A), a trade group representing most of the country’s largest airlines and a major proponent of developing new guidelines, recently noted that the growth in onboard service animals on planes far outpaced the growth in passengers over the past several years.
“In 2017, U.S. airlines saw a nearly 60 percent growth in the number of emotional support animals (ESAs) on flights, which stood in stark contrast to the 3.1 percent growth in the number of passengers,” A4A said in a statement. “In 2018, while that growth ‘slowed’ to 14 percent, it still was significantly higher than the 4.7 percent growth in the number of passengers.”
According to A4A, “the increase in travelers flying with untrained ESAs also has led to a sharp increase in animal incidents on flights, [including] urination, biting and other injuries by animals that are not qualified as service animals.”
Upcoming Rules for Service Animals on Planes
As “enforcement priorities,” the most recent action from the DOT serves mainly to set the stage for the rule-making process to come. The DOT’s approach is to give airlines discretion to deny service animals based on a series of broad criteria, and to not “take action against an airline for asking users … to provide documentation related to vaccination, training, or behavior so long as … the documentation would assist the airline in making a determination as to whether an animal poses a direct threat to the health or safety of others.”
Some examples of these enforcement priorities:
- Type of animal: “Priority will be placed on ensuring that the most commonly recognized service animals (dogs, cats and miniature horses) are accepted for transport. Nevertheless, airlines are still subject to enforcement action if they categorically refuse to transport other species that they are required to transport under the current rule.”
- In-flight containment: “The Department’s Enforcement Office will consider containment issues for all service animals on a case-by-case basis, with a focus on reasonableness. In general, tethering and similar means of controlling an animal that are permitted in the Americans with Disabilities Act context would be reasonable in the context of controlling service animals in the aircraft cabin.”
- Weight: “Under the Department’s disability regulation, airlines may deny transport to a service animal that is too large or too heavy to be accommodated in the cabin. The Department’s Enforcement Office views a categorical ban on animals over a certain weight limit, regardless of the type of aircraft for the flight, to be inconsistent with the regulation.”
- Age: The Department’s disability regulation does not address the minimum age of a service animal. However, all service animals (including ESAs) are expected to be trained to behave in public. As a general matter, the Department’s Enforcement Office would not view it to be a violation for an airline to prohibit the transport of service animals younger than four months as some airlines have done.