Job Description Mistakes You Don’t Want to Make
HR Law 101 Ep.4: What You Need to Know About Creating Effective Job Descriptions
Real World Impact: The Connecticut Appellate Court has ruled that, as a matter of law, full-time remote work is not a reasonable accommodation if it eliminates an essential function of an employee’s job that must be performed...more
During the COVID-19 pandemic and afterwards, employers have faced a growing number of requests for remote work arrangements based on a medical disability. The Americans with Disabilities Act requires employers to grant...more
When facing requests from a qualified disabled worker, the Americans with Disabilities Act allows employers to choose an effective accommodation, even if it is not the one preferred by the employee. Earlier this week, the...more
Seyfarth Synopsis: The Tenth Circuit Court of Appeals reversed a summary judgment award on an employee’s failure-to-accommodate claim. The Court’s decision focused on the employer’s improperly narrow delineation of the...more
Fifth Circuit precedent recognizes the “general consensus among courts” that regular, in-person work is an essential function of most jobs. Yet the continued viability of this premise has been in question, given the ability...more
Many employers have experienced an increase in employee requests for accommodations in the past few years. A federal jury’s recent award in Lisa Menninger v. PPD Development L.P. reminds employers that accommodation requests,...more
On September 15, 2021, the Tenth Circuit Court of Appeals upheld a district court’s grant of summary judgment in favor of an employer. In Brown v. Austin, the Tenth Circuit found that an employee’s telework, weekend work, and...more
Under the Americans with Disabilities Act, employers are required to consider reassignment to an existing vacant position as a last ditch form of reasonable accommodation for an employee unable to return to their previous...more
If disabled employees are no longer able to perform the essential functions of their job even with reasonable accommodation, under the Americans with Disabilities Act the employer must consider transferring the workers to an...more
In a recent opinion, the United States Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit affirmed that a multi-month leave of absence is not a reasonable accommodation under the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA)....more
On November 18, 2020, the United States Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit upheld a decision that retailer Lowe’s Home Centers LLC (“Lowe’s”) did not violate the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) when it removed a...more
In order to claim discrimination under the Americans with Disabilities Act, employees must demonstrate that they could perform the essential functions of the job but were denied a reasonable accommodation. Some employers...more
Employers in Ontario will likely welcome the decision in Katz et al. v. Clarke, 2019 ONSC 2188 (Divisional Court), which addressed the scope of the duty to accommodate in the event of an employee’s permanent disability. ...more
It was a close call, but a court recently denied an employee’s Americans with Disabilities Act claim that her employer had improperly refused a request to continue working from home as an accommodation. With the growth of...more
Seyfarth Synopsis: In a 2-1 decision in Bilinsky v American Airlines, Inc., 2019 WL 2610944 (7th Cir. June 26, 2019), the Seventh Circuit recently affirmed American Airlines’ summary judgment win against a former employee who...more
On April 1, 2019, the United States District Court for the Northern District of Illinois denied summary judgment in an Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) case, determining that occasionally excusing employees from...more
Recently, the United States Eighth Circuit Court of Appeals reaffirmed that regular and reliable attendance is an essential function of most jobs under the Americans with Disabilities Act (“ADA”). Lipp v. Cargill Meat...more
Job-protected leave continues to be the most common accommodation requested by employees under the Americans with Disabilities Act. For employers, the question remains at what point does the amount of work missed end the...more
Just a few months ago, we wrote about a case where a federal district court denied summary judgment to an employer who had asserted that attendance at work was an essential job function. The Court held that although regular...more
The Americans with Disabilities Act requires employers to provide reasonable accommodations that permit a disabled employee to perform the essential functions of his or her job. What happens, however, when an employer...more
Seyfarth Synopsis: The D.C. Circuit recently revived a single-leg amputee’s claim that his former employer failed to accommodate his disability by refusing his request for a classroom aide....more
The Americans with Disabilities Act is not an affirmative action law, meaning that employers are not required to hire or continue the employment of disabled persons who cannot perform essential job functions after reasonable...more
A recent decision from the District Court for the District of Nebraska serves as a reminder that overtime can be an essential job function. See McNeil v. Union Pac. R.R._ 2018 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 85250. On May 21, 2018, Union...more
Recently, the United States Court of Appeals for the First Circuit, in Sepulveda-Vargas v. Caribbean Restaurants, LLC, affirmed a lower court’s decision in favor of the employer in a lawsuit alleging violations of the...more
The Southern District Court of California, in Ruiz v. ParadigmWorks Group, Inc., held that an employer was not at fault for failing to grant an employee’s request for multiple medical leaves of absence where the employee was...more