Articles Posted in Discrimination - Disability

The EEOC has provided good news for workers who are at high-risk for COVID-19. High-risk employees are entitled to reasonable accommodations in the workplace during the COVID-19 pandemic! High-risk employees include any employees over 65 years of age. High-risk employees also include employees who have conditions the Center for Disease Control (CDC) has found make…

As employers across the country reckon with the impacts of the #MeToo movement, the California legislature and Governor Newsom took decisive action to extend the statute of limitations on certain workplace claims, acknowledging that those who have been targeted by discrimination, harassment, and retaliation do not always come forward immediately. The California Fair Employment and…

In a blow to those employees who suffer from stress and anxiety caused by abusive employers, a California Court of Appeals has determined that “an employee’s inability to work under a particular supervisor because of anxiety and stress related to the supervisor’s standard oversight of the employee’s job performance does not constitute a mental disability”…

Weaving v. City of Hillsboro, 763 F.3d 1106 (2014), involved an Oregon police officer who claimed he was terminated because of his disability, ADHD (Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder). The jury found for Officer Weaving, however the Ninth Circuit took his verdict away, claiming that ADHD may have limited his life functions of working and/or interacting…

In a partial victory for California workers, the State’s highest court ruled, in Salas v. Sierra Chemical Co. 59 Cal.4th 407 (2014) that employers cannot get away with violating California employment laws just because they find evidence, after being sued, that their mistreated employees did not have proper authorization to work in the United States.…

There is an employee-with-a-disability’s worst nightmare. You suffer from a disability. You try your best to go to work each day despite your disability (which here is a mental disability). Because of the stigma associated with the disability, you keep your medical condition to yourself. When you must miss work due to your disability, you…

The best that can be said about Smith v. Clark County School District (9th Cir 2013) 727 F.3d 950, as well as all the case law examining whether what an employee said on his or her disability application bars a claim for disability discrimination/failure to accommodate, is: BE CAREFUL! Anything you say can and will…

Ana Fuentes Sanchez took a pregnancy disability leave of absence while working for Swissport, Inc. When she exhausted her four months of leave mandated by the Pregnancy Disability Leave Law (PDLL) she was still unable to return to work because of the nature of her high risk pregnancy. Swissport terminated Ms. Sanchez after the expiration…

I understand the desire of an employee (or employee’s attorney) to exhaust all avenues to contest the wrongful discriminatory and/or retaliatory termination of an employee, but White v. City of Pasadena __F.3d___ (9th Cir Jan 17, 2012) is a prime example of why such a shotgun approach can be shortsighted and dangerous. Ms. White was…

Perhaps this case is an example of bad facts make bad law, or perhaps this panel was just kinda testy about the importance of attendance at work. Ms. Samper was a nurse who worked in the neo-natal intensive care unit of defendant Providence St. Vincent Medical Center. Due to an admitted disability, she needed some…