Excerpt from: Disability Law (click for full article)
Interstate Distributor Company will pay $4.85 million and provide other
significant relief to settle a nationwide class disability
discrimination lawsuit filed by the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity
Commission (EEOC), the agency announced today. The EEOC's suit said the
nationwide trucking firm unlawfully denied reasonable accommodations to
hundreds of employees and fired them pursuant to Interstate's maximum
leave policy.
According to the EEOC's suit, under the challenged
leave policy, if an employee needed more than 12 weeks of leave,
Interstate automatically terminated them rather than determining if it
would be reasonable to provide additional leave as an accommodation. The
EEOC also charged that Interstate violated federal law by refusing to
make exceptions to its "no restrictions" policy. Under this policy, if
an employee had restrictions, Interstate refused to allow them to return
to work and failed to determine if there were reasonable accommodations
that would allow the employee to return to work with restrictions.
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