Takeaway: Employers must engage in a good-faith, interactive process to identify and implement reasonable accommodations once an employee notifies the employer of a disability, triggering the employer's duty. Further, employees, particularly supervisors, should be reminded that e-mails are never private and that derogatory comments made about co-workers can be used by a plaintiff against the employer. Even if the employer can show legitimate, nondiscriminatory, nonretaliatory rationales for adverse employment decisions, if a jury sees enough circumstantial evidence to the contrary, it could find all the employer's rationales to be mere pretext.
The U.S. Postal Service (USPS) did not fail to accommodate an employee experiencing major depression and anxiety disorder when it did not transfer the employee to a position reserved for other employees impacted by postal facility consolidations. Nonetheless, the U.S. District Court in the Eastern District of Wisconsin allowed the claimant's retaliation claim to go to trial based on an "array of circumstantial evidence" primarily composed of derogatory e-mails between the employee's superiors. This "avalanche of e-mails" could lead a jury to conclude the supervisors engaged in unlawful discrimination of the employee's mental health condition.
The employee worked for USPS from July 1988 until his disability retirement in May 2013. In January 2016, the employee brought four claims against the USPS: failure to accommodate, retaliation,...
Maui Police Chief John Pelletier’s claims that Mayor Richard Bissen is under criminal investigation are false allegations “in service of a political fight,” Maui County Prosecuting Attorney Andrew ...