If you or someone close to you has a disability, then you know that disabilities are misunderstood. Some mundane tasks take you ten times as long, or require ten times as much effort, as they would for someone else. Avoiding activities and situations that make your symptoms worse also takes more time and planning than anyone realizes unless they have been in your situation. Despite your best efforts to manage your symptoms, you feel better on some days than on others. People might not be able to tell from looking at you what is causing your pain, lack of concentration, or other symptoms that make it difficult for you to work.
It is not your employer’s business to know why your symptoms began and when, if ever, you can expect them to go away. It is, however, against the law for your employer to discriminate against you based on your disability. Your employer is also legally obligated to make reasonable accommodations for people with disabilities to do their jobs, although what counts as a reasonable accommodation varies on a case-by-case basis. The Bozeman disability discrimination lawyers at HKM Employment Attorneys LLP can help you request accommodations for your disability and, if necessary, file a complaint about disability discrimination in your workplace.
Disabilities in the Workplace
In the context of federal and state employment laws, a disability is any long-term health condition that inhibits your ability to perform one or more tasks of daily life, such as mobility, speech, or eyesight. Having a disability and being able to work are not mutually exclusive. Millions of Americans who have medically diagnosed disabilities work part-time or full-time. These are some commonly misunderstood points about disabilities in the workplace:
- Your condition might still count as a disability even if you are asymptomatic on some days.
- A temporary inhibition of your ability to perform activities of daily life counts as a disability, whether it is self-limiting or resolves as a result of treatment. For example, you might qualify for disability accommodations if you can only perform light-duty work for several months after a scheduled surgery. Many of the rules about accommodations for temporary disabilities also apply to pregnancy.
- Some disabilities do not have outwardly visible signs. Paraplegia and blindness are disabilities, but less visible conditions such as migraine or post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) can also qualify as disabilities.
- To get accommodations for your disability, you must only notify your employer that you have received a diagnosis of a disability. The law does not require you to reveal private details about your medical history.
Protected Characteristics and Employment Discrimination
The legal framework for protecting employees and job applicants from discrimination based on disability is that disability is a protected characteristic. The Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990 (ADA) establishes disability as a protected characteristic pursuant to federal and state employment laws, as well as outlining other protections for people with disabilities.
A protected characteristic is a stable feature of a person’s body or life history, based on which employers may not discriminate. Other examples of protected characteristics include race, age, sex, religion, national origin, and marital status. When an employer takes an adverse action against an employee based on a protected characteristic, this is discrimination. For a job applicant, discrimination could take the form of refusal to hire, whether the employer rejects the candidate’s application from the outset, or whether the candidate gets to the final round of selection; if the disability or other protected characteristic was the reason that the employee did not hire the candidate, then this is discrimination, and it is against the law.
For current employees, discrimination could be a single incident, such as refusing an employee’s application for a raise, reassigning the employee’s job duties when the employee did not request this, reducing the employee’s pay, or terminating the employee’s employment. It might also take the form of a hostile work environment, where supervisors micromanage the employee’s work more than they do with other coworkers, or where coworkers treat the employee rudely and disrespectfully and make derogatory comments about the employee’s protected characteristic while he or she is present.
Requesting Reasonable Accommodations for a Disability
Employees and job seekers with disabilities have the right to reasonable accommodations at work and in the job application and screening process. An accommodation is an adjustment to the work environment, work schedule, or nonessential work duties that enables an employee with a disability to do his or her job. The following are examples of accommodations that people with disabilities might request:
- A wheelchair-accessible desk and an office on the first floor of a building without an elevator
- Text-to-speech and speech-to-text software on the work computer of a blind employee
- More frequent breaks or a relaxation of rules about eating at the work station for an employee who must frequently monitor his or her blood sugar and eat if it is low
- Not requiring a receptionist with mobility impairments to reload the paper in the copy machine, if this would ordinarily be one of the duties of receptionists
Whether an accommodation is reasonable depends on the disability, the job, and the accommodation. Employers do not have to take on excessive financial burdens to accommodate employees with disabilities, but they do have to spend the company’s money to make accommodations they can afford. It is not employment discrimination if an employer does not follow the employee’s original accommodation request to the letter. Instead, the employer can suggest another accommodation that is feasible for it. Firing an employee or pressuring him or her to quit in response to the employee’s request for an accommodation does count as disability discrimination. Employer retaliation, such as this, is always illegal, regardless of whether it is related to a protected characteristic of the employee.
HKM Lawyers for Disability Discrimination
The employment lawyers at HKM Employment Attorneys, LLP, can give you advice about filing a disability discrimination complaint against your employer. Contact us about your case in Bozeman, Montana, to set up a consultation.
