Discriminating against people with disabilities in the workplace and the hiring process is not only wrong, it is against the law at the federal, state, and city levels in New York. Various events can trigger an employer’s obligation to inquire about a reasonable accommodation for an employee with a disability. When an employer fails to take appropriate action – or takes an improper (punitive) step – in response to one of these triggers, that could represent a statutory violation for which the harmed worker can recover compensation. If you have been improperly treated on the job because of your disability, reach out to an experienced New York disability discrimination lawyer to find out what your next steps should be.
When it comes to these triggers, a recent disability discrimination case that arose here in Manhattan is a good example.
The employee, who worked at a major Midtown-based media company, was assigned the task of writing social media copy. The employee “repeatedly” notified her employer that she had dyslexia, and her disability made completing the writing task especially difficult.
Triggering the Interactive Process Requirement
At this point, it is useful to pause and look at the significance of the employee’s actions. In this situation, the employee’s dyslexia was a qualifying disability. Once she told her supervisors about her dyslexia and the problems it was causing her, the employer had a legal obligation to engage the woman in a good faith “interactive process” to find a reasonable accommodation for her disability. (That obligation arises even in the absence of a specific request by the employee. Whenever an employer knows about – or reasonably should have discovered – an employee’s disability, the obligation is triggered.)
One suggestion the employee proposed was assigning a coworker to proofread her writing. The employer did not provide this accommodation; in fact, the employer did not provide an accommodation at all. Instead, the company fired the woman.
If you are a worker with a disability, you should be aware that, in some scenarios, your employer may not have a legal obligation to provide you with an accommodation. One such circumstance occurs when providing an accommodation would impose an “undue burden” on the employer. Keep in mind, though, that your employer must proactively argue “undue burden” as part of its defense. The law does not require you to prove the opposite (that accommodating your disability would not impose an undue burden.) In the dyslexic woman’s case, the employer never argued in court that providing a proofreader would have created an undue burden, a detail the appellate court highlighted in upholding a lower court’s ruling in the employee's favor.
A Cause… Not Necessarily the Primary Cause
Many discrimination cases rely heavily, if not solely, on indirect evidence. Few employers will create a paper trail documenting that they punished an employer for an illegal reason. Sometimes, though, employers make errors in documenting an employee’s personnel file, which can be significantly beneficial to the worker’s discrimination case.
In New York, the law does not require that a worker who pursues a discrimination case prove that discriminatory reasons were the sole, or even the chief, elements driving the adverse employment action that the employer took. Instead, the law merely demands that the worker prove that discrimination is one of the motivating factors.
In the dyslexic woman’s case, her supervisor wrote that the decision to fire the woman “was based in part on [her] ‘mandate around [her] responsibilities.’" Even though the employer offered legitimate reasons for the termination and presented evidence that it had already decided to fire her before the written accommodation request, a reasonable jury could look at that “mandate around her responsibilities” language and interpret it to mean that the employer fired her because it disapproved of the way the employee went about requesting her disability accommodation.
As noted above, employers’ statutory obligations arise when they know or should know about employees’ disabilities. Employers are not freed from those obligations simply because they disapprove of the style, tone, or degree of insistence an employee uses in her request. When an employee seeks justice after her employer fired her because of her disability, “she was too pushy” is not a valid defense.
If you believe you are experiencing disability discrimination at work, there are several steps you can take. For one, document everything. Two, complain internally to your employer’s human resources team or appropriate compliance officer. Three, consult legal counsel. The skillful New York disability discrimination attorneys at Phillips & Associates are passionately dedicated to helping workers with disabilities protect their rights and, when necessary, seek justice through the civil court system. Contact us online or at (833) 529-3476 to set up a free and confidential consultation.