As we enter the third year of the global COVID-19 pandemic, many U.S. businesses are implementing long-delayed return-to-office plans and hoping to establish a new equilibrium. Public health experts, economists and policymakers increasingly speak of “endemicity,” a phase in which COVID-19 transmission rates fall to a constant but manageable baseline level, perhaps confined to certain regions, rather than actively accelerating and spreading throughout the population in epidemic fashion. Some refer to this next phase as “living with COVID” or even consider it a “return to normal.”
In the employment law context, however, “living with COVID” does not represent a return to normal. Rather, developments since 2020 make clear that human resources professionals can expect—and are already encountering—numerous COVID-19 related challenges to their disability accommodation practices. This paper reviews a “top ten” list of emerging issues in this area, broadly relating to increased claims for accommodation, administering the interactive process, and assessing the reasonableness of proposed accommodations.
Issues Related to Increased Claims
The ADA Amendments Act of 2008 (ADAAA) was explicitly adopted to increase the population that would qualify for coverage, and possibly accommodation, under the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA). Since the ADAAA’s adoption, employers generally have absorbed the notion that the term “qualified individual with a disability” is to be construed...
The internet is full of people promising effortless tax refunds. For many, the business model is simple: invent expenses, file claims at volume, and take a cut. These “refund factories” exploit HM...