Total Articles: 3
ADA’s Interactive Process May Require Plaintiff to Identify Open Position for Transfer.
As defined under the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA), the term “discriminate” includes an employer’s failure to make reasonable accommodations to the limitations of a disabled employee. Reasonable accommodation may include reassignment to a vacant position within the company. The 10th U.S. Circuit court of Appeals recently held that a disabled employee could not support her failure-to-accommodate claim under the ADA, because she did not present evidence of any specific vacant positions to which she could have been transferred.
ALTERNATIVE POSITIONS AS A REASONABLE ACCOMMODATION: WHAT IS REQUIRED?
The federal Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) and California’s Fair Employment and Housing Act (FEHA) both require employers to reasonably accommodate the known physical or mental limitations of an otherwise qualified employee or applicant with a disability. However, an employer’s duty to provide reasonable accommodation under the FEHA is broader than under the ADA, even considering the recent amendments to the ADA which become effective on January 1, 2009. (We wrote about the amendments in our September 24, 2008, column.)
Job Reassignment Under ADA Remains Unclear.
While the Supreme Court stands to be quite busy in the next several months deciding important employment law questions, it will not issue a ruling in one of the more widely-anticipated cases that had appeared on its docket this term: Huber v. Wal-Mart Stores, Inc.
This case was to decide the correct standard to apply in ADA cases when an employee seeks a reassignment to a new position as a reasonable accommodation – should that employee merely be afforded the opportunity to compete with other applicants in the normal hiring pool, or should the employer be forced to grant preferential treatment and automatically reassign that employee above more qualified applicants?
