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.
Last Rites for Neutral Absence Control and Maximum Duration of Leave Policies?
For more than 15 years Texas employers have used the application of uniformly enforced neutral absence control policies setting a maximum duration an employee can be away from work as a defense to workers’ compensation retaliation claims. The defense was first solidified by the Supreme Court of Texas in in its 1996 Continental Coffee Prod. v. Casarez case. See