When is an employer’s “inflexible” attendance policy really just a sham to discriminate against disabled workers? That is the million-dollar question. Or, at least it was the question raised in two recent cases under the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA).
In the first decision, handed down Feb. 11 by U.S. District Judge Sara L. Ellis of the Northern District of Illinois, the court examined whether the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) could challenge United Parcel Service Inc.’s (UPS) policy of terminating employees who were unable to return to work after 12 months of leave on the grounds that such a policy constitutes an unlawful qualification standard under the ADA. (See EEOC v. UPS, 2014 BL 35887, N.D. Ill., No. 1:09-cv-05291, Feb. 11, 2014.) In doing so, the court rejected UPS’s contention that the requirement is an attendance policy permissible under the ADA because regular attendance is an essential job function for its workforce.
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