HR professionals may find it confusing to determine when they have to consider various accommodations for an employee with a disability, especially if the employee is on leave. Two recent legal settlements shed some light on compliance for reasonable accommodations.
The Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) requires employers to provide reasonable accommodations to job applicants and employees with disabilities, as long as the accommodation doesn’t impose an undue hardship on the business, meaning a significant cost or difficulty. Many states also have laws that require reasonable disability accommodations.
In November 2023, Citizens Bank agreed to pay $100,000 to a former employee of its Cranston, R.I., call center to resolve a disability discrimination lawsuit. Citizens Bank allegedly refused to accommodate the employee after he developed an anxiety disorder and went on medical leave. He requested to be reassigned to a position that did not require him to field calls from aggravated customers over the phone. The company refused to reassign the employee to a different job or discuss other possible accommodations until he returned to his job at the call center. Meanwhile, Citizens Bank had many open positions nearby, according to the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC), which brought the lawsuit.
“While we strongly disagree with many of the factual and legal assertions contained in this case, we are pleased to have this matter settled...
A front-page article with the byline of veteran New York Times opinion writer Nicholas Kristof is the latest poisonous example of what I call the NGO “halo effect.” Headlined “The Silence That Mee...