Dive Brief:
- Walmart will pay $60,000 to settle U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission allegations that it revoked a worker’s disability accommodations and then fired her for insubordination, according to a Monday news release from EEOC.
- The worker, a stocker, had since her hiring in 2017 received a reasonable accommodation to perform her tasks according to a routine, which accommodated her cognitive disabilities, EEOC said in a complaint. After a management change in 2020, her tasks were changed daily, and she was fired after she resisted an attempt to redirect her work, EEOC said.
- As part of the consent decree, in addition to paying $60,000, Walmart will provide Americans with Disabilities Act compliance training to HR and management staff, post a notice informing employees of their rights and furnish reports of complaints to EEOC. Walmart did not admit liability or unlawful conduct as part of the decree.
Dive Insight:
A change in management can be a common time for employers to run afoul of discrimination laws, particularly when an accommodation that had been in place without issue — sometimes for years — is suddenly revoked.
For example, Marriott Vacations Worldwide Corp. and Marriott Ownership Resorts settled a lawsuit in December in which EEOC alleged that after a change in management, the companies revoked a Seventh-Day Adventist worker’s accommodation to have Saturdays off to observe her Sabbath.
Similarly, in 2020, a Trump International Hotel worker filed a lawsuit after her religious accommodation to not work on Sundays was revoked after being honored for years due to schedule changes made by a new supervisor. That case was eventually dismissed with prejudice, court records show.
The Job Accommodation Network has reminded employers that their obligation to engage in an informal process — typically referred to as the “interactive process” — is ongoing. While employers are not required to forever guarantee the same accommodation, they must again engage in the interactive process with the employee to determine a suitable alternative if they decide an accommodation must be changed.
