Earlier this month, a widely-recognized Fortune 50 company reached a $1.7 million agreement with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission to resolve nearly a decade of litigation over the company's nation-wide policy of discharging workers who do not return from medical leave after 12 months.
While this settlement still requires approval by a federal judge, the litigation itself (and the size and scope of the settlement, which also includes changes to the company's policy, notice-posting, record-keeping, reporting, and other requirements) should be instructive for employers dealing with a common issue: what to do with employees who are granted a medical leave but cannot return to duty at the end of a set time period.
In arguing for its 12-month maximum medical leave policy, the company maintained that such a limit is permissible under the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA), since regular work attendance is an essential job function for its employees. Certainly hard to argue that isn't true. However, the EEOC has long contended that leave can be a necessary "reasonable accommodation" that employers must consider under the ADA. While that may also be true, the EEOC takes this point further and also contends that virtually any maximum leave policy or other similar inflexible criteria violates the ADA's reasonable accommodation requirements. The EEOC contends such set and inflexible rules are really just a way for a company to weed out disabled workers. Further, the EEOC argues that such rules are an illegal employment qualification standard that improperly affects disabled workers.
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