Verizon agreed to pay $20 million dollars and ceasing using its no-fault attendance policy for absences caused by impairments qualifying as disabilities under the ADAAA. Whatever the size of Verizon’s Human Resources Department, it looks like its going to need to be a lot larger.
As part of the settlement with the EEOC, Verizon agreed that
There’s an old saying in rural America that "pigs get fat and hogs get slaughtered." We used the phrase to describe someone who, instead of being satisfied with what he has, gets greedy. In the litigation context it can be used to describe a party that takes overly aggressive, unreasonable and untenable positions. My fellow bloggers, Work Blawg
This week the EEOC held a hearing on whether new or updated regulations and enforcement guidance was needed with respect to providing leave of absence as a reasonable accommodation for disabled employees. The EEOC has recently been very aggressive in bringing suit against employers that use maximum leave policies or "inflexible" policies that provide no exception for reasonable accommodation.
There has been a lot of ink spilled and kilobytes written about how the ADA Amendments Act has substantially expanded the rights of individuals with disabilities to seek and obtain reasonable workplace accommodations. (See post, post, post, and post). The increase in the number of applicants and employees who qualify for reasonable accommodations and
In a suit you don’t see filed everyday, the El Paso District Office of the EEOC recently filed a disability discrimination lawsuit against Starbucks over the termination of an employee suffering from dwarfism. According to the EEOC’s Complaint:
Charging Part has a physical impairment, dwarfism. . . [and] is substantially limited in the major life
The EEOC published its final regulations interpreting the ADA Amendments Act on March 25, 2011. Consequently, those regulations become effective on March 24, 2011. The effect of the Act and these regulations is that large numbers of employees will qualify as disabled under the law thereby triggering an increased number of applicants and employees who
Last week the EEOC issued two Informal Discussion Letters addressing employment practices or policies that might create liability under a disparate impact theory of discrimination. Since the discussion letters do not constitute official opinions or interpretations of the Commission, the significance of back-to-back letters on the same topic is not the content (the letters do not break any new legal ground or make any surprising pronouncements)
I wrote about an unusual dispute between the EEOC and a San Antonio law firm where the EEOC sought enforcement of an administrative subpoena seeking law firm records in connection with a charge of discrimination filed by a former employee of the firm. You can read that post here.
Well, like Spring itself that blows in like
When investigating a charge of discrimination, the EEOC has the authority to issue administrative subpoenas requiring employers to produce relevant information. This power, however, is rarely used because most employers voluntarily comply with the EEOC’s reasonable requests for information.
In San Antonio, a law firm respondent is testing the EEOC’s powers to require information be produced
On February 18, 2010, the EEOC published a proposed rule defining the employer’s "reasonable factors other than age" (RFOA) defense to a claim of disparate impact age discrimination. A disparate impact theory of age discrimination argues that while the policy or practice challenged does not directly discriminate on the basis of age; it affects older workers in greater numbers.