Dive Brief:
- Butterball settled U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission allegations that it violated the Americans with Disabilities Act by firing an employee with breast cancer after its third-party administrator failed to process her request for intermittent leave to receive chemotherapy and she missed work due to the treatments, the EEOC announced Tuesday.
- Per the three-year consent decree in EEOC v. Butterball, LLC, the North Carolina-based food processing company agreed to pay the employee $230,000. The consent decree also prohibits Butterball from using a third-party leave and/or disability accommodation benefits administrator without making sure the vendor can effectively process reasonable accommodation requests under the ADA.
- The settlement reminds employers they can’t “delegate [their] responsibility for complying with the ADA” to a third-party administrator and “must ensure that effective policies and procedures are in place” to meet their obligations under federal law, EEOC regional attorney Melinda Dugas stated in the announcement.
Dive Insight:
The company denied the allegations and that it acted unlawfully regarding the employee, the consent decree said.
In response to the settlement, a representative for Butterball told HR Dive in an email that, “At Butterball, our team members are at the heart of everything we do, and we are dedicated to creating an environment where people feel supported, celebrated and connected.”
According to the EEOC’s March lawsuit, with her daughter’s assistance, the employee, who speaks almost exclusively Haitian Creole, advised Butterball of her diagnosis and requested leave to attend medical appointments and recover from her chemotherapy treatments. Butterball instructed the women to contact its third-party benefits administrator, which instructed them to use its online claims process, the lawsuit alleged.
In line with that process, they filed a critical illness claim and a request for leave, but the administrator allegedly never followed up, the complaint said. As a result, the employee incurred attendance points for missing shifts due to her cancer treatments. Butterball eventually fired her, even though she allegedly provided notes from her medical providers explaining her absences.
The EEOC sued Butterball for violating the ADA by failing to reasonably accommodate the employee and firing her because of her disability. Her settlement payment includes $18,400 in back pay, $134,941 in compensatory damages and $76,659 in attorney fees, according to the consent decree.
Also under the consent decree, Butterball must identify an internal liaison to facilitate communications and help employees submit accommodation or claim requests to its third-party administrator. Additionally, the consent decree requires the company to follow up on accommodation requests and make sure a third party’s policies for receiving and processing reasonable accommodation requests, requests related to leave, and requests involving a disability — as well as a vendor’s decision to deny medical leave-related requests — comply with the ADA.
Butterball must also make its leave policies available in English, Spanish and Haitian Creole.
In July, SC Johnson and a former employee agreed to end a lawsuit involving similar allegations under the Family and Medical Leave Act. According to the lawsuit, the company allegedly approved the employee’s request for FMLA leave but had outsourced FMLA administration to a third party.
The employee claimed it was “almost impossible” to get a hold of anyone at the vendor and “significant problems” with its system discouraged him from taking FMLA leave. He was later fired, in part, for failing to follow SC Johnson’s leave procedures. He sued the company for interfering with his FMLA rights, and a federal judge said the case could move forward.
