Previously, I have written that, “the Americans with Disabilities Act requires that medical information obtained on an employee or prospective employee be kept confidential.” See Understanding the Americans with Disabilities Act, third edition at p. 40. However, in light of EEOC v. Thrivent Financial for Lutherans , _F.3d_, 2012 WL 5846208 (7th Cir. November 20,
Title I
“Regarded as” and title II and are there different rules for “direct threat” depending upon the context
Recently, I read a case out of the Western District of Pennsylvania which I found absolutely fascinating. In this particular case, the court dealt with three issues. First, does the plaintiff have a disability at all? Second, does “regarded as” even apply outside of the title I context? Finally, was the plaintiff a direct threat…
Mixed motive: another permutation and do lawyers have it backwards
A hot area of the Americans with Disabilities Act jurisprudence is the question of mixed motive. That is, can a plaintiff get a mixed motive jury instruction in Americans with Disabilities Act cases, or for that matter in Rehabilitation Act cases as well, in light of Gross v. FBL Financial Services? Previously, we have…
Sovereign immunity principles outside of sovereign immunity claims and the importance of self-evaluation and transition plans
In a previous blog entry, I talked about the principle of sovereign immunity as it applies to persons with disabilities. As mentioned in that blog entry, a state, including an arm of the state, is not going to be forced to waive its sovereign immunity with respect to disability discrimination in employment matters.…
LSAT and Title III discrimination
Anybody that wants to go to law school must take the LSAT, law school admission test sponsored by the law school admission Council (LSAC) . The LSAT is a standardized test consisting of 100 multiple-choice questions ( Binno v. American Bar Association, 2012 WL 4513617, *1 (E.D. Mich. September 30, 2012)), divided into five…
Persons with disabilities and peremptory challenges
Few cases today actually go to trial. However, the ones that do go to trial involving juries necessarily mean that a jury has to be picked first. Jurors aren’t so much picked as they are eliminated. With respect to jury selection, there are three kinds of jury challenges. First, there is a peremptory challenge. Peremptory…
Sovereign immunity and persons with disabilities
Sovereign immunity is enormously complicated. What it is, is a principle from which the founding fathers took from England that says a sovereign cannot be sued for damages without its consent. This principal goes way back, and also can be found in the 11th amendment to the United States Constitution. The language of the 11th…
Is reassignment mandatory revisited
In a prior blog entry, I discussed a case where the Seventh Circuit was faced with the question as to whether the ADA mandated reassignment or whether competitive bidding would suffice in order to comply with the ADA. That particular case, as discussed previously in this blog, held that prior Seventh Circuit precedent…
How might you know when more leave is a reasonable accommodation once FMLA leave has been used up?
There are several laws out there that intersect with the Americans with Disabilities Act. One of them is the Family and Medical Leave Act (FMLA). That law intersects with the Americans with Disabilities Act in a variety of ways. I am not going to explore all of those ways in this entry. What I do…
Reassignment revisited
In a prior blog entry, I discussed how the issue of reassignment when an otherwise qualified person with a disability can no longer do the job would eventually be headed to the Supreme Court. However, that entry did not address the question as to how you go about proving up, i.e. making a prima…