Is The EEOC Still Going After Low-Hanging Fruit?

Years ago, I posted - often - about the number of medical and health practitioners and companies being charged with discriminating against people with disabilities.  Seemed that this was a frequent scenario, and I wondered about it in my monthly post in Above The Law – “Who do you suppose the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (“EEOC”) targets most for alleged violations of the Americans With Disabilities Act (“ADA”)?”    

What reminded me of this issue is an EEOC press release yesterday which notes that it filed a new lawsuit: “Federal Lawsuit Charges Rehabilitation Center Failed to Accommodate Nurse Who Needed Surgery and Fired Her After She Complained of Sex Harassment.” 

I thought in 2017 that I had the answer, and it still seems true: it’s easy for the EEOC to go after “low-hanging fruit” - it’s as simple as “shooting fish in a barrel.” 

Let me explain.

In a second Above The Law article, I wrote that: 

“Health care folks – the caring folks, the ones who treat the sick, wounded and lame – violating the ADA. Doesn’t the hypocrisy jump out at you? If you were a health care or medical provider would you like to be on the radar of the EEOC for … discriminating against people with disabilities?

What a way to be seen by the public. What could be worse press? 

In ATL I cited one example where the EEOC settled an ADA case - a disability support service company allegedly “had a practice of firing employees with disabilities who needed extended leave or reassignment rather than providing them with reasonable accommodations as required under federal law.” 

Nice PR, huh?

For another example, the EEOC settled a case in which it alleged that a volunteer employee at a community hospital was refused hiring into a paid position for which she was otherwise qualified because she suffered from cerebral palsy

And my favorite example was a senior living community which allegedly refused to accommodate an employee with fibromyalgia. The employee was the Health and Wellness Director!

Explain that to an inquiring reporter!  I said that in a case like this, “the employer looks terrible, and the EEOC looks heroic.”

It all came together when I noticed a quote from the EEOC which said that “One would expect that a medical center, of all places, would be sensitive and understanding on the needs and challenges of an employee with a disability.”

“A medical center, of all places…”

It is clear that the EEOC understands “shooting fish in a barrel!”  “Think of the media attention when folks who are in the business of helping the sick, the disabled, and the infirm are caught discriminating against them,” and “the likelihood of a quick settlement.”

Takeaway:

I’ll let an EEOC District Regional Attorney (commenting on one of the cases, above) have the last word and be today’s “takeaway”:

“Sometimes it looks like organizations engaged in the health care field or in the performance of other ‘good works’ consider it impossible for them to have discriminated — or to be challenged for having discriminated — particularly when it comes to the ADA. But our experience has been that all organizations, whatever their line of business and however they are organized, are vulnerable to falling into patterns or acts of discrimination if they do not consciously make compliance with federal anti-discrimination laws a priority.”