Chipotle ADA ruling shows job-performance policies still have teeth
Business Insurance
A federal appeals court ruling that upholds the termination of a restaurant worker fired after acting inebriated while taking a prescribed anxiety medicine illustrates that employers can still dismiss workers for poor job performance despite expanded definitions of disability under federal law, experts say.
Lisa Caporicci, an employee at a South Tampa, Florida, restaurant operated by Denver-based Chipotle Mexican Grill Inc., was terminated June 7, 2013. After taking a relatively new medicine for anxiety, she “was very slow, messed up orders and was incoherent,” according to the May 27 ruling by the U.S. District Court in Tampa in Lisa Caporicci v. Chipotle Mexican Grill Inc.
DOJ warns Young Shakespeare Players-East after boy with peanut allergy excluded from production
MassLive.com
The play is the thing, said William Shakespeare's Hamlet. But the Americans with Disabilities Act is pretty important too, says the U.S. Department of Justice.
A letter of finding issued by the Department of Justice notes The Young Shakespeare Players- East violated the Americas with Disabilities Act by failing to make accommodations for an 11-year-old student with a severe peanut allergy, and then by retaliating against a 12-year-old student who complained that her friend was being left out because of his disability.
Labor and Employment Alert: Colorado Now Requires Reasonable Pregnancy Accommodations
Lexology
Effective August 10, 2016, Colorado employers will be required to provide job applicants and employees with reasonable accommodations for pregnancy and physical recovery from childbirth. An employer only has to provide an accommodation if requested and if the accommodation would not impose an undue hardship. The intent of this legislation (House Bill 1438) is “to combat pregnancy discrimination, promote public health, and ensure full and equal protection for women in the labor force by requiring employers to provide reasonable accommodations to employees with conditions related to pregnancy, childbirth, or a related condition.” An employer who violates the requirement to provide a reasonable accommodation commits an unfair or discriminatory practice.
Mentally ill often feel workplace biases
Fort Wayne Journal Gazette
Even as people with mental illness reveal their struggles to strangers on the internet, they’re reluctant to divulge them at work. Their fears are founded: Stereotypes of those with mental illness as unreliable, less competent and even dangerous abound in the workplace.
“I am constantly amazed at how widespread the fear of people with mental illnesses is and the false association with violence and dangerousness,” said Jennifer Mathis, the director of programs at the Bazelon Center for Mental Health Law.
JD Supra
Last year, Ohio legislators found themselves caught in the middle of a media firestorm created by various pro-legalized marijuana groups who were politically savvy and financially funded enough to place multiple proposed constitutional amendments on Ohio’s November 2015 election ballot. While Ohio voters soundly rejected the proposed constitutional amendments—which also sought to legalize recreational marijuana use and create a small monopoly of marijuana grow site operators—the proponents’ “back door” efforts to create new Ohio law through a state constitutional amendment instead of through the legislative process did not go unnoticed by members of Ohio’s General Assembly. The intense media attention and political polling from last year’s ballot initiatives also made clear that Ohioans were ready to legalize marijuana for medical purposes.