Tag: equality

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New Study Says Age Discrimination Remains a Persistent Issue for Employers

Jon Hyman The Practical Employer

Insurance company Hiscox just released its 2019 Ageism in the Workplace Study [pdf], which revealed some sobering statistics about the growing problem of age discrimination for American employers.

  • The number of age-related discrimination charges filed with employers and the EEOC by workers aged 65-plus doubled from 1990 to 2017.
  • 44 percent of employees report that they or someone they know experienced age discrimination in the workplace.
  • 21 percent report they faced age discrimination themselves.
  • 36 percent feel their age has prevented them from getting a job since turning 40.
  • 26 percent feel there is some risk they could lose their current job because of age.
  • Only 40 percent who experienced age discrimination filed a charge or complaint.
  • Employers paid $810.4 million to settle age discrimination charges filed with the EEOC between 2010 and 2018 (excluding litigation).

These numbers are only going to get worse. By 2024, workers age 55 and older will represent 25 percent of the nation’s workforce, with the fastest annual growth rates among those aged 65 and older. Indeed, according to the Hiscox survey, 67 percent of surveyed workers age 40-65 plan to continue to work after they turn 66.

This trend is not without its cost to employers. Age discrimination hurts employers, and I’m not just talking about the $810 million paid in settlement costs.

  • It demotivates employees, which can hurt productivity, customer service, and product quality.
  • It causes a loss of talent and institutional knowledge, due to experienced workers leaving from a stalled career or hostile environment.
  • It causes employers to miss the opportunity of hiring and retaining workers who possess knowledge, experience, good judgment, and commitment to the job.

So, how can an employer help prevent age discrimination from permeating its workplace? The EEOC, in its State of Age Discrimination Report, published last year to commemorate the 50th anniversary of the ADEA, offers the following five suggestions.

1. Leadership needs to create and foster a workplace culture that is committed to a multi-generational workplace where all workers can grow and thrive, which extols ability and reject discriminatory stereotypes and words.

2. Employers and employees must recognize and reject stereotypes, assumptions, and remarks about age and older workers, and treat them no differently than stereotypes, assumptions, and remarks about sex, race, disability, national origin, religion, or other protected classes.

3. Companies should work to increase the age diversity of the workforce by hiring, retaining and engaging employees of all generations,

4. Businesses should implement recruitment and hiring strategies that avoid age bias by seeking workers of all ages and not limiting qualifications based on age or years of experience. These strategies should include training recruiters and interviewers to avoid ageist assumptions and common perceptions about older workers, assessing interviewing strategies to avoid age bias, and having an age-diverse interview panel for prospective employees.

5. Employers should develop retention strategies to keep older workers. I’ve written about this point before, which you’ll find here.
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It’s Inexcusable for an Employer NOT to Have an Anti-discrimination Policy

Jon Hyman The Practical Employer

There are some employment policies that you can get away with not having. An anti-discrimination policy is not one of them.

In Hubbell v. FedEx SmartPost (decided Aug. 5 by the 6th Circuit), FedEx learned this lesson the hard way.

Sheryl Hubbell worked for Defendant FedEx SmartPost as a parcel sorter. A jury concluded that it retaliated against her after she filed an EEOC charge alleging that her manager demoted her and ultimately fired her after telling her that “females are better suited to administrative roles and males are better suited to leadership roles.” A jury awarded her $519,550, reduced by the trial court to $415,60 (plus an additional $157,733.75 in attorneys’ fees).

This employer made a lot of mistakes that caused this large judgment, but one of the biggest was that it did not have an anti-discrimination policy until 2013, one year after Hubbell claims she started suffering retaliation.

Several of Hubbell’s managers testified that FedEx had an anti-discrimination policy and that they had been trained on this policy. Jessica Benjamins, FedEx’s corporate Human Resources manager, also testified as to FedEx’s anti-discrimination policy. She testified that FedEx conducts annual online “diversity inclusion training” for managers. And she testified that it has long been FedEx’s policy not to discriminate. But FedEx only promulgated a specific policy on non-discriminatory hiring and promotion on November 26, 2013—after Hubbell was demoted and filed her first EEOC complaint.

So here’s your homework assignment. Open your employee handbook. Turn to the table of contents. Look for the policy that says, “Discrimination.” If you can’t find it, call me.

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When an Employee’s Religion Clashes With an Employer’s Dress Code

Jon Hyman The Practical Employer
A Muslim woman is suing the hospital at which she works as medical assistant, claiming she was told she needed a “note from the Quran” when she asked for an exception to the hospital’s dress code to wear a face covering during Ramadan.

The case, Boyd v. Cooper University Hospital, is pending in federal court in New Jersey. While it’s just filed and years from resolution, we can use it to learn how an employer should react when a employee dons religious garb in the workplace.

Title VII requires that an employer reasonably accommodate an employee’s sincerely held religious belief. This accommodation includes exceptions to an employer’s dress code or grooming policy.

According to the EEOC, an employer may not “automatically refuse to accommodate an applicant’s or employee’s religious garb or grooming practice if it would violate the employer’s policy.”

Title VII requires an employer, once it is aware that a religious accommodation is needed, to accommodate an employee whose sincerely held religious belief, practice, or observance conflicts with a work requirement, unless doing so would pose an undue hardship. Therefore, when an employer’s dress and grooming policy or preference conflicts with an employee’s known religious beliefs or practices, the employer must make an exception to allow the religious practice unless that would be an undue hardship on the operation of the employer’s business. … For purposes of religious accommodation, undue hardship is defined by courts as a “more than de minimis” cost or burden on the operation of the employer’s business.

There are limits, however, and an employer may “bar an employee’s religious dress or grooming practice based on workplace safety, security, or health concerns … but only if the practice actually poses an undue hardship on the operation of the business.”

The employer should not assume that the accommodation would pose an undue hardship. While safety, security, or health may justify denying accommodation in a given situation, the employer may do so only if the accommodation would actually pose an undue hardship. In many instances, there may be an available accommodation that will permit the employee to adhere to religious practices and will permit the employer to avoid undue hardship.

While we have no idea how the Boyd case will play out, it nevertheless serves as a great illustration of the need for employers to consider exceptions to dress codes as reasonable accommodations for employees’ sincerely held religious beliefs, and the risks that occur when employers skirt this obligation.

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Parental Discrimination Claims Pose Big Risks for Employers

Jon Hyman The Practical Employer
The article is right — parental discrimination claims (which are really just sex discrimination claims brought by working parents) are very dangerous for employers.

What is parental discrimination? The article breaks this claim down into four different subsets.

    1. Pregnancy discrimination: Examples include firing someone because she is pregnant, refusing to hire someone because she’s pregnant, or denying an accommodation to a pregnant employee that you otherwise grant to other employees with similarly disabling limitations.
    2. Caregiver discrimination: Treating moms (or dads) differently than non-parents because of their parental responsibilities outside of the workplace.
    3. Breastfeeding discrimination: Denying accommodations, including unpaid break time and private lactation spaces, to new moms.
    4. Stereotyping discrimination: Denying employment or employment-related opportunities (i.e., promotions) to moms (and dads) based on stereotypes like, “You’re more dedicated to your family than your job.”
According to the article, the number of parental discrimination claims filed in federal courts rose an astounding 269 percent between 2006 and 2015, and continues to rise.

Moreover, not only are parents suing more, but they’re also more likely to win. A typical employee only wins a workplace discrimination case between 16 and 33 percent of the time. Parental discrimination claims, however, are two to four times more successful for employees, with plaintiffs winning 67 percent of cases that go to trial.

Why are these claims so dangerous for employers? Working Mother offers several theories.

1. The number of employees with family responsibilities has swelled.

2. #MeToo has affected a cultural shift towards the rights of women in the workplace.
3. There exists more awareness of sex and pregnancy discrimination laws.
4. Society can be more progressive than many employers, who are still operate from the stereotypical idea of one-working-parent households.

We no longer live in an Ozzie & Harriet world. Long gone are the days when the wife would be waiting at home to greet her husband with a pair of slippers and a martini while she put dinner on the table for the family. Women work. Moms work. And no one should be treated differently or punished as a result.

As the Working Mother article adroitly points out, there is only one unhappy ending to telling an employee that his wife, or she, belongs at home with the children. It starts with law- and ends with -suit. Women have the right to work, and neither they, nor their spouses, should be punished for exercising that right, regardless of their chosen profession. Employers, force a working parent to make that unlawful choice at your own risk.

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Why Was a Stadium Full of People in France Chanting ‘EQUAL PAY’?

Jon Hyman The Practical Employer

Indisputable fact No. 1: Women and men should earn the same pay for the same work.

Indisputable fact No. 2: The players on the United States women’s national soccer team earn substantially less than their counterparts on the men’s team

The Equal Pay Act requires that an employer pay its male and female employees equal pay for equal work. The jobs need not be identical, but they must be substantially equal. Substantial equality is measured by job content, not job titles.

The Act is a strict liability law, which means that intent does not matter. If a woman is paid less than male for substantially similar work, then the law has been violated, regardless of the employer’s intent.

This strict liability, however, does not mean that pay disparities always equal liability. The Equal Pay Act has several built-in defenses, including seniority, merit, quantity or quality of production, or any other factor other than sex.

Which brings us to indisputable fact No. 2, and the stadium chanting “equal pay.”

Two things of note happened in the U.S. soccer world on Sunday. The women won their fourth World Cup title, dominating the entire tournament, including the Netherlands 2-0 in the final. Meanwhile, the men lost the CONCACAF Gold Cup final 1-0 to Mexico.

The women’s team currently is engaged in a gender discrimination lawsuit against the United States Soccer Federation, claiming that the organization pays its male players way more than its female players. How much more? According to documents obtained by the Guardian, for example, each player on the U.S. women’s national team could receive more than $260,000 for winning the Women’s World Cup; each player on the men’s national team could earn more than four times that amount for winning the World Cup.

Last I checked, $260,869 does not equal $1,114,429. That’s a pay gap. Which could be legal under the Equal Pay Act, but only if it’s based on a factor other than sex. And this is where I plead ignorance. U.S. Soccer says that any pay differences are “based on differences in aggregated revenue.” I have no idea whether that’s true or false, but if true it might qualify as a “factor other than sex.”

What I do know, however, is that U.S. Soccer cannot justify these pay differences based on merit or success. The FIFA Women’s World Cup has been held eight times — the U.S. women’s team has won four of them, and has never placed worse than third. In the same time frame, the men’s team failed to even qualify for the 2018 World Cup and has never finished better than the quarter-finals (once, in 2002). The U.S. women have also won four Olympic gold medals, nine out of 10 CONCACAF Women’s Gold Cups, and are the No. 1 ranked team in world.

And, on the same day the women’s team won the World Cup, the men’s team lost the CONCACAF Gold Cup final (no offense to North American. Caribbean, and Central American soccer, but winning the CONCACAF Gold Cup is the equivalent of a AAA baseball team winning its league — it’s nice to win, but you’re not beating the best players on the best teams in world).

Based on results, it seems to me that not only should the women’s team be paid equally with the men’s team, but that there exists a great argument for the scale to be flipped, with the women’s team earning substantially more than do their male counterparts.

So, soccer fans and legal scholars, educate me. Why are the women paid so much less than the men?

I want to understand. Help me understand.

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5 Myths Surrounding Women in the Indian Workplace

India women in the workplace

“If one man can destroy everything, why can’t one girl change it?” — Malala Yousafzai

Women in India constitute 48.4 percent as compared to 51.6 percent of men in the total Indian population of 1.37 billion people.India women in the workplace

A good ratio, right? Moreover, according to international non-governmental organization Catalyst, Indian women access higher education at the same rates as men at 27 percent.

But the ratios are not in favor of women when it comes to their participation in the workplace. Research by Catalyst notes that “only about 29 percent of Indian women work compared to 82 percent of Indian men.”

Indian women are in order first and foremost supposed to be a devoted wife, a doting mother and then a working professional. Women in India are expected to conform to traditional and societal norms.

Family always has to come before work. Women in India also have to be present and represent every ritual and cultural function conducted. And the older a female gets in India, the more she is bound in a “double burden syndrome” — balancing home and work.

But even women who get to join the workforce are not free of facing stereotypes and harassment. Women are rarely offered C-suite roles and similarly lofty positions.

There’s a lot that people hold against women in the workplace. It’s time to shatter the myths associated with women in the workplace and help increase their workplace participation.

Myth: Women Can’t Negotiate

The gender wage gap is the highest in India, according to Indian English-language daily Business Standard. Women in India are paid 34 percent less than what an Indian man is paid in the workplace, according to a research conducted by the International Labour Organization.

The prevailing explanation as to why women don’t earn as much as men is that “women aren’t aggressive enough.” People say that women don’t push their employers hard enough to give them a raise or that they can’t negotiate.

That’s not true. Women are as assertive as men when asking for salary appraisal. More and more studies in 2019 are showing that the rate of women and men asking for salary is the same. But, the conversion rates still favor male employees over women.

Myth: Too Emotional or Too Cold

In higher-level managerial positions, women often face a double bind. When they portray female characteristics, they are termed as emotional or sensitive. But when they follow traditional leadership roles, they are perceived as too difficult or too cold.

Lisa Feldman Barrett, the director of Northeastern University’s Interdisciplinary Affective Science Laboratory, said that emotions are not something that we are born with but are rather created according to circumstances. And in India, women are groomed to be delicate, fragile and sensitive to situations. Therefore, it can be said that portraying high emotional intelligence is not biological but rather a social construct.

Myth: Women Don’t Belong in STEM

According to UNESCO, only 30 percent of women in India participate in STEM-related fields in higher education. What’s more disheartening is that the dropout rate among women in technology is even higher in junior to midlevel positions. Across Asia, the dropout rate is 29 percent.

Another reason why women continue to remain underrepresented in STEM fields begins very early in childhood.

Women are associated with arts and languages and men with math and science. When given a mathematical examination, women are under a lot more pressure to succeed than men. When applying this institutional fear toward a workplace full of men, it adversely

Myth: Women Are Only Good at Soft Skills

This is a judgment held against women, especially in the engineering field. Soft skills involve communication, creativity, adaptability, flexibility and teamwork. These are skills that every individual who works with other people needs to possess irrespective of profession and gender. To be a successful engineer, one needs to have both technical as well as soft skills.

Myth: Sexual Harassment Is a Woman’s Issue

The number of registered cases against sexual harassment in the workplace increased 54 percent from 371 cases in 2014 to 570 in 2017, according to the independent Indian English-language news site Scroll.in. But, as it is in most cases, the majority of these reported cases were from women. Due to maximum cases being reported by women, people assume that women are subject to harassment and therefore it’s “their issue” and they should resolve it on their own.

Sexual harassment doesn’t limit itself to a gender. While it’s important to understand that, it’s also important for people to stand by each other when such cases are reported. Men and women should be allies when someone reports against a “higher-up” or report when they have witnessed something.

Instead of holding their social conditioning against them, let’s all try to build a workplace in India where everyone has the same opportunities and treatment irrespective of their gender.

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Stalker Costs Costco in Bulk

Dawn Suppo was a Costco Wholesale Corp. employee.

A customer approached Suppo and asked her personal questions, including where she lived. A few days later, the same customer asked Suppo more questions. In another instance, Suppo noticed that the customer was in a disguise, and watching her from behind an aisle.

Suppo complained to her supervisors, but to no avail. Suppo also asked for a closer parking spot in the Costco parking lot, which was denied. The customer encountered Suppo at least 20 more times over the next 13 months, in some instances attempting to touch Suppo, bumping his cart into her, and, in one instance, videotaping her. Suppo was forced to obtain a “no contact order” to restrain the customer.

The stalking forced Suppo to take family medical leave to avoid continued encounters with the customer. Eventually, Costco terminated Suppo because her unpaid medical leave had expired. Suppo filed a hostile work environment charge with the EEOC under Title VII. After an investigation, the EEOC filed a lawsuit against Costco on behalf of Suppo.

The case proceeded to a jury trial, and the jury ruled in favor of Suppo. On appeal, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 7th Circuit held that the harassment Suppo faced was “severe and pervasive” under the law, given the significant amount of stalking that took place.

The court affirmed the jury’s conclusion that there was a basis for employer liability because the employer’s response to Suppo’s predicament was “unreasonably weak.” EEOC v. Costco Wholesale Corp., 903 F.3d 618 (7th Cir. 2018).

IMPACT: Employers should be aware that a hostile work environment can be created by unreasonable behavior on the part of a company’s customers. In the case of stalking, employers should attempt to provide solutions to employees to avoid the stalking and cooperate with police where necessary.

Also in Legal Briefings: Public Sector Employers and Age Discrimination

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What Does a Valid Jury Waiver Look Like?

Jon Hyman The Practical Employer

Earlier this year, the Senate took up the Forced Arbitration Injustice Repeal Act. 

It would, among other things, prohibit employers from requiring employees, as a condition of employment, to sign agreements submitting employment and civil rights claims to arbitration in lieu of filing in court. According to Vox.com, this legislation has some initial bipartisan support, and has some legit traction to perhaps become law.

I am on record as not being a fan of arbitration for employment disputes. I do not believe they are any less expensive or time consuming that in-court litigation. In stead, I’ve previously argued for tools such as contractually shortened statutes of limitations and jury waivers as tools employers can to limit risk instead of arbitration agreements.

What does a jury waiver look like, and in what circumstances do courts enforce them? A recent Ohio appellate decision provides the answer.

In Kane v. Inpatient Med. Servs., the employer required its employees, as a condition of employment, to sign an employment agreement that contained the following jury trial waiver.

Waiver of Jury trial. EACH PARTY HERETO ACKNOWLEDGES AND AGREES THAT ANY CONTROVERSY WHICH MAY ARISE UNDER THIS AGREEMENT IS LIKELY TO INVOLVE COMPLICATED AND DIFFICULT ISSUES, AND THEREFORE EACH PARTY HEREBY IRREVOCABLY AND UNCONDITIONALLY WAIVES ANY RIGHT SUCH PARTY MAY HAVE TO A TRIAL BY JURY IN RESPECT OF ANY LITIGATION DIRECTLY OR INDIRECTLY ARISING OUT OF OR RELATING TO THIS AGREEMENT AND ANY OF THE AGREEMENTS DELIVERED IN CONNECTION HEREWITH OR THE TRANSACTIONS CONTEMPLATED HEREBY OR THEREBY.

In her sex discrimination lawsuit, Kate Kane argued that her discrimination claims should have been tried by a jury because the jury trial waiver did not expressly mention discrimination claims within its umbrella of coverage. The appellate court disagreed.

Undoubtedly, the waiver provision is broad. It encompasses “any litigation directly or indirectly arising out of or relating to this agreement and any of the agreements delivered in connection herewith or the transactions contemplated hereby or thereby.” This Court must conclude that Ms. Kane’s claims alleging discriminatory termination at the very least indirectly arise out of or relate to Ms. Kane’s employment agreement.

She also argued that the jury trial waiver as a whole was invalid, as she did not she did not voluntarily, knowingly and intelligently waive her right to a jury trial. Again, the appellate court disagreed, noting that courts apply the following five factors to determine if a “jury waiver was was entered into knowingly, voluntarily, and intelligently.”

  1. The conspicuousness of the provision of the contract;
  2. The level of sophistication and experience of the parties entering into the contract;
  3. The opportunity to negotiate terms of the contract;
  4. The relative bargaining power of each party; and
  5. Whether the waiving party was represented by counsel.

In this case, the court concluded that the five factors merited the enforcement of the jury waiver.

We note that while the provision appears towards the end of the agreement, the provision is nonetheless conspicuous as it appears in all capital letters while most of the agreement does not. Ms. Kane has not argued she was unaware that the provision was in the agreement. Ms. Kane is a college-educated professional with experience negotiating contracts. In fact, there was evidence that Ms. Kane negotiated a higher salary prior to accepting an offer of employment. There was no evidence presented that would indicate Ms. Kane did not have a meaningful choice with respect to the waiver. And while the record does not indicate whether Ms. Kane was represented by counsel at the time she was offered a job, the employment agreement does contains a clause indicating that Ms. Kane “had the opportunity for th[e] Agreement to be reviewed by counsel[.]” Ms. Kane’s mere assertions that she did not understand she would be waiving her right to a jury trial for these claims is insufficient under the circumstances to demonstrate that the waiver was not entered into voluntarily, knowingly, and intelligently. We cannot say that the waiver is unduly complicated or confusing such that someone of Ms. Kane’s background would not have understood the scope of the right she was waiving.

Thus, if you seek for employees to contractually waiver their right to a jury trial, you should ensure:

  1. The waiver is in writing.
  2. It is clearly and conspicuously delineated within an agreement, such that employee is not likely to miss it upon reading the contract.
  3. It is written in language for which it is reasonable for the employee to understand.
  4. The possibility of negotiation of any terms of the employment agreement is at least a possibility.
  5. If offers the opportunity for the employee to have their own counsel review it before the employee signs.
And, while it’s tempting merely to ape the language used in Kane, you should really have your own employment counsel review a jury waiver before you implement it in your own employment agreements.
I love the Kane case, because it gives employers something to think about other than, “Everyone else loves arbitration agreements, so we do too.” After careful deliberation, you might decide that arbitration agreements are the correct answer for your employees and your business. Before making that decision, however, consider the risks, benefits and alternatives. You might just decide that jury waiver is the right solution.
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Abortion Discrimination = Pregnancy Discrimination

Jon Hyman The Practical Employer

Thanks to, among other states, Alabama, Georgia, and Ohio, the debate over abortion is raging.

Suppose you are staunchly anti-abortion, and you learn that one of your employees is considering, or has had, an abortion. Can you fire her?

Thus far, three courts have looked at this issue, and all three courts have all reached the same conclusion.

No.

The latest, Ducharme v. Crescent City Déjà Vu, L.L.C. (E.D. La. 5/13/19), concerned an employee fired after requesting two days off to have an abortion. She claimed pregnancy discrimination, and the court held that Title VII’s prohibition against pregnancy discrimination also prohibits abortion discrimination.

The court finds that abortion is encompassed within the statutory text prohibiting adverse employment actions “because of or on the basis of pregnancy, childbirth, or related medical conditions.” While an abortion is not a medical condition related to pregnancy in the same way as gestational diabetes and lactation, it is a medical procedure that may be used to treat a pregnancy related medical condition. … [A]n abortion is only something that can be undergone during a pregnancy. Title VII requires that “women affected by pregnancy, childbirth, or related medical conditions shall be treated the same for all employment-related purposes.” A woman terminated from employment because she had an abortion was terminated because she was affected by pregnancy.

This case aligns with the only two appellate courts to rule on the issue, the 3rd and 6th Circuits, as well as the EEOC’s interpretation of the definition of pregnancy.

Case closed. If you learn that one of your employees is having, or has had, an abortion, do yourself a favor and just let her be. Her choice, for which you cannot punish her. Moreover, unlawful discrimination notwithstanding, I promise you that the decision she is making is painful enough, without you exacerbating her pain by firing her.

For more on this case, head over to the Employer Handbook Blog, where Eric Meyer covered it yesterday.

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This Disability Discrimination Lawsuit Was No Party

Jon Hyman The Practical Employer

Party City has agreed with the EEOC to pay $155,000 to settle an ADA lawsuit the agency filed on behalf of a rejected job applicant on the autism spectrum and suffering from severe anxiety.

According to the lawsuit, the individual had been receiving services from Easter Seals of New Hampshire to build up her self-confidence, including working and applying for a job. These services included a job coach.

When the Party City interviewer learned that the woman accompanying her to her interview was a job coach, the EEOC alleged that his entire attitude changed.

The hiring manager told the job coach that Party City had hired people with disabilities with job coaches in the past and that it had not gone well, and made disparaging comments about those emp­loyees. Although both the applicant and the job coach explained to the hiring manager that the applicant had been successful shadowing others in previous retail jobs, the hiring manager was uninterested in either the applicant’s abilities or in the limited role the job coach would play. … The hiring manager tried to cut the interview short by telling the job coach in a patronizing tone, “Thank you for bringing her here,” while the applicant was still in the room. The hiring manager also stated, in the applicant’s presence, that the Party City employee who had encouraged the applicant to apply would hire anyone, and would “even hire an ant.”

Per EEOC regional attorney Jeffrey Burstein, “Federal law requires employers to consider disabled job applicants based on their abilities, not on demeaning stereotypes.” Adds Kevin Berry, director of the EEOC’s New York District Office, said, “Allowing this applicant to work with a job coach in her early weeks of employment would not have caused an undue burden on Party City. The ADA requires employers to make this type of reasonable accommodation so as to enable qualified people with disabilities to join the workforce, which is a win-win for everyone.”

Four takeaways from this lawsuit and settlement:

    1. An employer’s obligation to consider and offer reasonable accommodations does not just extend to employees, but also to applicants. Employers cannot shirk their ADA responsibilities just because the person needed the accommodation is just an applicant.
    2. Past bad experiences with other employees or applicants are not a valid reason to deny a reasonable to a current employee or applicant. Reasonable accommodations are individualized, and must be considered on an individual-by-individual basis. Telling someone that you can’t offer an accommodation because of past bad experiences with others is a recipe for an expensive (and difficult to defend) lawsuit.
    3. A job coach is potential reasonable accommodation you must consider when presented by a disabled employee or applicant. You have to then engage the individual in the interactive process and determine how to offer that accommodation, if possible.
    4. Party City did the right thing by recognizing that it mishandled this applicant and settling this lawsuit through early mediation. It could have avoided the whole problem, however, by ensuring that those involved in hiring for its stores understand their reasonable accommodation obligations to disabled applicants. Indeed, I’d go so far as to say that no one should be doing any interviewing or hiring without ADA and reasonable accommodation training. This risk is just too great.