California Adopts New Disability Discrimination Regulations

Regulations proposed by California’s Fair Employment and Housing Commission governing disability discrimination have been finalized after public comment and are now in effect. According to the Statement of Purpose, the Commission intends that the definition of “disability” be construed as broadly as allowed by the Fair Employment and Housing Act (FEHA), California’s principal anti-discrimination law. The Commission urges that the primary focus in cases brought for alleged violation of the FEHA should be on whether employers have provided reasonable accommodations, whether employers and employees have met their obligations to engage in the “interactive process,” and whether discrimination has occurred. The Commission opines that whether the employee meets the definition of disability “should not require extensive analysis.” It is true that, in many cases, an employee’s status as a disabled person will be obvious. In other cases, unfortunately, the convoluted definitions of “disability” adopted by the Commission in its efforts to define that term to the outer limits of the law will require just the sort of extensive analysis the Commission wishes to avoid – unless employers are to abandon the question of a disability’s existence entirely and simply assume that anyone requesting an accommodation is disabled under the law.