Dive Brief:
- In today's workplace, the idea that light duty work is available only to employees who are injured on the job is no longer valid, according to an article at HRMorning.com.
- Today's employment law decisions are tilting to apply light duty work options to pregnant employees as well, writes author Christian Schappel.
- The article discusses a recent case where a North Carolina court disagreed with an employer's decisions to deny light duty work to a pregnant worker.
Dive Insight:
In the lawsuit a female police officer asked for light duty work and was not only denied the request by her employer, the Town of Wake Forest, NC. -- she was fired, reported HRMorning.
She appealed and despite the employer's belief that firing her was legally within its rights, the U.S. Supreme Court’s latest pregnancy discrimination ruling held sway with the North Carolina court. That court ruled her allegations were valid because the “practice of denying accommodation requests by pregnant workers while granting them to other similarly temporarily disabled male police officers has a disparate impact on pregnant women.” The case will now proceed to trial (or settlement).
Schappel writes that the safest policy employers can adopt is: "If an employee has a pregnancy-related impairment that hinders her ability to perform a job, [insert company name] will attempt to see if it can provide a reasonable accommodation that would allow the employee to continue to perform her job."
