Dive Brief:
- When an employee asks for an accommodation for a disability, the EEOC expects management to go through the full process of determining whether or not a reasonable arrangement can be made. Two health-related firms recently learned that lesson the hard way, according to an article at HRMorning.com.
- In both cases, a home healthcare and a large, national senior care center chain refused requests for accomodations so that employees (one had fibromyalgia and the other epilepsy) could continue to work, EEOC alleged.
- Among other penalties, the firms wound up paying more than $100,000 each in fines.
Dive Insight:
In both cases, the firms signed consent decrees and both decrees focused on the commitment to provide training to employees on their obligations under the ADA. In one, the company agreed to stop engaging in any discrimination or retaliation on the basis of disability. The consent decree also required the company to allow the EEOC to monitor compliance during the decree’s two-year term.
The other firm agreed to train employees and district managers on the ADA’s requirements, including the need to provide reasonable accommodation to qualified individuals with disabilities, and report to the EEOC if there are any further complaints of disability discrimination or retaliation.
Sounds simple, yet even companies this large still made the same mistakes. For HR, ADA compliance should be among the top legal considerations. And these two companies serve as example of how not to do that, according to the EEOC's courtroom results.
