Tag Archives: ADA

Did the Supreme Court undercut ADA protections for employees of religious hospitals?

Posted on July 13, 2020 by Jon Rehm

Last week the Supreme Court decided that two teachers working at Catholic schools could not sue their employer for discrimination because of the “ministerial exception” to federal workplace discrimination laws.

The Supreme Court clarified (or broadened) what kind of religious school employees are excluded from anti-discrimination laws. The Supreme Court held that the First Amendment’s Religion clause precluded courts from second guessing the reasons for firing ministerial employees. The court held there was no formula for who was a ministerial employee. The court stated that depended on the extent an employee conveyed the message of the church and carried its mission.

Arguably, the Morrissey-Berru decision and the Hosanna-Tabor decision which it relied on only apply to religious school teachers. Before these decisions, lower courts held that most religious school teachers were covered under federal civil rights laws. (See the dissent from Justice Sotomayor starting at page 37 of the opinion.)

Who else will be excluded from civil rights laws?

So, if churches have broader latitude to discriminate against employees, how broad is that latitude. Would this apply to nurses and nurses aides at hospitals affiliated with a church? Nurses and nurse’s aides are often injured at work. Because of this fact, they often need to invoke the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) and Family Medical Leave Act. (FMLA) Would a religious hospital argue the ministerial exception to argue the ADA and FMLA did not apply to a nurse or nurse’s aide hurt at work?

So far, at least in Nebraska and the Eighth Circuit I haven’t seen any cases where that happened. But Catholic Health Initiatives (CHI), a major health care employer locally, has some expressly religious statements in its mission statement. Would that language be enough to argue ministerial exception? Maybe not, but religious freedom advocates have advised employers about steps they can take to invoke the ministerial exception defense.

Another commonality between Morrisey-Berru and Hosanna-Tabor

I believe that major church-affiliated health care employers will continue to follow the ADA and FMLA. Major employers and their HR departments tend to be risk-averse. But in litigated cases, I believe outside counsel would push ministerial exception arguments.

Both the Hosanna-Tabor and Morrisey-Berru cases involved ADA claims. This fact fails to surprise me and I doubt that it’s entirely coincidental. From a practical perspective, ADA claims tend to be better cases for employees than other civil rights cases. I believe this is so because employers are more likely to botch ADA/FMLA compliance than other forms anti-discrimination laws. Arguing the ministerial exception is one way to defeat an otherwise valid ADA case.

A return to the pre-ADAAA bad old days?

But when I started practicing in 2005, ADA cases were harder to win. What changed was the ADA Amendments Act of 2008 which broadened the definition of disability. That change made ADA cases easier to prove.

Those changes to the ADA also made it easier for workers to heal from work injuries and return to work after injury. Pre-2008, if an injured worker was not ready to return to work after their 12 weeks of FMLA leave they would likely be fired. This threat often forced injured workers to attempt to return to work before they were ready. In tandem with “100 percent healed” policies, injured workers would also work with their doctors to downplay or eliminate work restrictions. An employee who returned to work with “no restrictions” before ready risked injury and also compromised the value of their workers’ compensation case.

But if courts extend Hosanna-Tabor and Morrisey-Berru to health care workers, the past is prologue for those workers. If courts extend these cases to hold the FMLA does not apply to health care workers, the future may be worse than the pre-ADAAA past.

Common law employment law claims?

Left unaddressed by the Supreme Court is whether religious employers can claim exemption from common law employment law claims. For example, Nebraska law makes it unlawful to retaliate against a worker claiming workers compensation. The Nebraska Workers Compensation Act covers churches and church employees. Arguably it would defeat the purpose of that law to allow churches or religious employers to retaliate against those employees.

On the flip side, Supreme Court cases about employment law tend to persuade state court judges. In her dissent in Morrissey-Berru, Justice Sotomayor criticized the ministerial exception as judge-made law. But the law prohibiting employers from retaliating against employees who claim workers’ compensation is also judge-made. That fact may make judges in Nebraska more willing to create a ministerial exception in common law anti-retaliation claims.

The problem with workers’ compensation award ceremonies

Posted on October 21, 2019 by Jon Rehm

Recently three injured workers were honored at the Comp Laude Gala put on by trade publication Workers’ Compensation Central. The event included a panel with the catastrophically injured workers who overcame their injuries.

Individually the stories of these workers are all inspiring. The Comp Laude Gala should also be credited for giving these workers a place to voice their stories. Too often workers’ compensation lawyers and the insurance industry either talk to or talk about injured workers. It is good to hear their perspective.

But the idea of an event dominated by the workers’ compensation insurance industry giving awards to injured workers bothers me for two reasons — the types of injured workers recognized are atypical and focusing on individuals ignores legal and political issues that impact injured workers and workers’ compensation laws.

Award winners aren’t representative of injured workers as a whole

The Comp Laude Awards recognized workers who were catastrophically injured. Catastrophic injuries and death claims are different than your typical workers’ compensation claim in that it is less likely compensability and nature and extent of injury will be disputed by the insurer. These workers and their families are less likely to have a bad experience with a workers’ compensation insurer or claims administrator.

Catastrophic injury and death claims are more likely to involve third-party liability cases. Injured workers with a viable third-party case have a better chance of being compensated adequately than an injured worker stuck with just workers’ compensation.

In his post about the Comp Laude injured worker awards, blogger Bob Wilson classified the award winners as advocates. Other types of injured workers were either adversaries or addled types who are less likely to accept their new condition and less motivated to improve their conditions. There is some validity to these classifications. But as other observers have pointed out everyone deals with trauma differently. Heroism should not be the standard that injured workers are held to when it comes to recovery from an injury.

Maybe the industry doesn’t believe that heroism should be the standard for injured workers. But the Comp Laude awards seem to signal that workers with more mundane injuries workers’ compensation injuries that they don’t have it so bad and they should suck it up.

Ignoring the social and political context of work injuries.

Wilson pointed to two police officers who were back to work after catastrophic injuries. It takes time, usually a lot longer than the 12 weeks allotted by FMLA, to recover from a serious work injury. But police officers are usually represented by unions and union workers usually have more generous leave policies that allows them the time to recover from work injuries and return to work. Union contracts also give employees more leverage in accommodating a disability beyond what they have under the Americans with Disabilities Act. But the role of organized labor in injury recovery seems to be ignored in stories that focus on individual heroism.

Focusing on individual tales of “resilience” also diminishes the importance of injured workers and their families taking actions to change laws to improve workplace safety and workers’ compensation laws. At least for the Comp Laude awardees, workers’ compensation laws seemed to work fairly well. But for no amount of money can replace the life of a family member killed in a work injury. The families of workers killed on the job have started organizing and advocating for workplace safety through United Support and Memorial for Workplace Fatalities (USMNF)

In the Canadian province of Ontario there is an injured workers group active in advocating for injured workers to improve workers’ compensation laws. Injured workers have also taken to protesting that provinces workers’ compensation board through the Occupy Wall Street-inspired organization Occupy WSIB. Sure Occupy Workers’ Compensation would be considered radical by Comp Laude Gala attendees and even by some plaintiff’s attorneys. But the spirit of Occupy speaks to the anger and disaffection felt by many injured workers — the so-called adversaries and addled.

Injured workers who fight for themselves and others in the political arena are advocates in the true sense. Workers’ compensation professionals, whether they represent employees or employers deal with the anger of injured workers on a regular basis. These workers don’t need lectures about mindfulness or acceptance. They need a way to channel their legitimate anger in a productive way to change workers’ compensation laws. Injured workers and their families are starting to do this across North America. Merely celebrating resilience among a select set of injured workers will not improve workplace safety or workers compensation laws.

Upon further review: 2nd thoughts on the AMA 2nd

Posted on May 13, 2019 by Jon Rehm

Back in October, I wrote a critical post about the American Medical Association Guide to Causation of Injuries, 2^nd edition. (AMA 2^nd for short) But as I revised that post to submit as a more formal article, I realized some of my criticisms of the AMA 2^nd were misplaced.

I still believe the AMA 2^nd will be used by the defense bar to informally heighten causation standards. Other bloggers have made similar observations about the use of the AMA 2nd.

I still believe the AMA 2^nd will be used in lobbying efforts by the insurance industry.

But after reviewing the AMA 2^nd in more detail, I think the danger of the AMA 2^nd is in the misuse rather than the use of the AMA Guides.

I came to my conclusion after reviewing materials written about the AMA 2nd by J. Mark Melhorn, MD who is one of the primary authors of the AMA 2^nd.

The AMA 2nd gives doctors guidance on how to determine causation for a work injury. How the AMA 2nd differs from a traditional differential diagnosis is that the Guides ask doctors to consider statistical studies concerning causation – or epidemiology – as to whether a condition is work-related. I think it is important to note that the AMA 2^nd still requires a doctor to consider work duties and other factors specific to the injured worker in determining whether an injury is work-related or not. The authors of the AMA 2^nd is clear about the limits of epidemiology. The authors of the AMA Causation Guides are also clear that medical causation and legal causation are different concepts.

Because of how the AMA Guides to Permanent Impairment, 6^th edition (AMA 6^th) for short, have hurt injured workers, I like most plaintiff’s lawyers have a visceral reaction to anything document that includes “AMA Guide” in the title. But if I am faced with a medical report or doctor stating that my client’s work duties could not have caused his or her injuries citing to the AMA 2^nd, the AMA 2^nd is likely being misinterpreted.

The term “evidence-based medicine” is another trigger for plaintiff’s attorneys. Evidence-based medicine is synonymous with the use of statistical research. While the defense bar seems to have marshalled the mystique of math to their advantage, a lot of time the numbers can work for employees. Plaintiffs can cite to favorable studies linking repetitive or overuse to musulo-skeletal conditions.

Epidemiology can also be helpful to workers in other ways. In cases litigated under the ADA employers will justify discrimination based on disability under the theory that a disability or medical condition can pose a direct threat to the safety or health of others. Epidemiology can help an employee prove their medical condition poses little or no risk to their safety or the safety of others. In my experience, this is particularly true if this research is shared with specialists who have treated the individual in the past.

Who is going to hire me with restrictions?

Posted on April 11, 2019 by Jon Rehm

Injured workers who are looking to return to work with work restrictions after an extended time of healing from an injury face some problems in returning to work. In many cases the injured worker has been off work well beyond any time covered by the Family Medical Leave Act, the Americans with Disabilities Act and or any leave of absence policy, so they are unable to return to their old job assuming they could do their old job.

Workers in this situation often ask “Who is going to hire me with restrictions?” It’s a legitimate question. Here a few do’s and don’ts from my experience as a lawyer representing injured workers.

Do: Work with vocational rehabilitation

Nebraska offers vocational rehabilitation, VR for short, as part of our workers’ compensation act. Sometimes vocational rehabilitation can mean an injured worker gets paid their so-called temporary total disability rate while they go to school. More often this means a vocational counselor helps an injured worker look for work while they are receiving those benefits. VR is the Rodney Dangerfield of workers’ compensation benefits – it often gets no respect – but it can be very helpful for injured workers. It’s also not a benefit that an insurance company will often voluntarily offer to an injured worker like medical benefits or temporary disability pay.

Nebraska also offers vocational rehabilitation through our state department of education. That fact confuses a lot of my clients when I talk about VR through workers’ compensation. But if an injured worker has settled their workers’ compensation case or is fighting their workers’ compensation case, they can use VR through the state department of education to help return to work

Don’t: Assume no one will hire you

Disability discrimination is real. That’s why there is the Americans with Disabilities Act and parallel state laws. Under the ADA, it is illegal for an employer to discriminate against a qualified employee with a disability who can do a job with or without reasonable accommodations.

What that does that last sentence mean?. In plain terms, this means that so long as you meet most of the qualifications of the job, an employer or perspective employer should work with you to make minor tweaks to a job. Sometimes this means using a stool to avoid standing. Sometimes this means using a cart to avoid heavy carrying or lifting.

In practical terms, Nebraska employers claim there is a shortage of workers. I think business interests overstate this concern for political reasons, but as the job market has improved employers seems more willing to take chances on employees.

Don’t: Fail to disclose your restrictions or injury if asked by a new employer post-hire

In order for an employee to accommodate restrictions from an old injury, they need to know about the restrictions. While an employer can’t ask you about a disability pre-hire, they can ask about a disability post-hire so long if it is job related. The “Who is going to hire me with restrictions” line can get a worker into trouble if they don’t disclose they have some restrictions to certain body parts. Again, an employer needs to work with you to some extent on accommodating an old injury,

Failing to disclose an old injury can also make it more difficult to make a workers’ compensation claim if an injury with a new employer worsens an old injury. It can also be grounds to deny a workers’ compensation claim entirely. Failing to disclose an old injury can potentially be grounds for termination for dishonesty on employment application.

Don’t: Tell anyone who isn’t your lawyer or a family member that “No one is going to hire me with restrictions.”

Going back to the “Who’s going to hire me with restrictions?” It’s a legitimate question. But if an injured worker is still fighting a workers’ compensation claim, that statement said to the wrong person can hurt a claim.

Who is the wrong person? Anyone who isn’t a family member or your lawyer.

When a vocational rehabilitation counselor, doctor, insurance company lawyer, insurance adjuster or mediator hears “Who is going to hire me with restrictions?” they tend to think. “This person doesn’t want to work” and or “This person isn’t hurt as bad as they think they are.”

Why do they think that way? If you work on the insurance-side of workers’ compensation for an extended length of time, I think you tend to perceive cases from that perspective. Lawyers and doctors and other professionals look at work differently. Many professionals tend to live to work rather than work to live. I believe that professional class people glamorize blue collar labor and tend to get nostalgic about blue collar or service jobs they did when they were younger. Professional class people also tend to consume media geared towards professional class people that tends to cover the workplace from the perspective of business.

But regardless of why professionals involved in workers’ compensation case think this way, those professionals have a lot of influence over the value of an injured workers’ compensation claim. Injured workers need to be careful about how they communicate with these professionals.

Accommodation on the job for amputees draws media attention

Posted on October 11, 2018 by Jon Rehm

A federal court in Nebraska recently ruled in a case about accommodating a wheelchair bound amputee on the job.

Two recent cases involving Walmart and accommodating workers with amputations have made the news recently.

The EEOC sued Walmart for allegedly failing to hire a Texas woman with an amputated hand as a stocker. Here in Nebraska, a federal district court denied summary judgment in a failure to accommodate claim involving an amputee who used a wheelchair and requested not to wear a long butcher coat because it got stuck in his wheelchair.

The Texas and Nebraska cases both turn on arguments about the failure of Walmart to engage in an interactive process to accommodate a disability. The Nebraska case also emphasized that this interactive process need not be formal which is a point I have made before.

The longer I practice workers’ compensation and employment law, the more I despise bureaucracy. Reading “The Utopia of Rules” by David Graeber in 2015 crystallized my thinking on the topic. In early 2017, I wrote a post about just cutting management out of the accommodation process altogether if possible. I wrote that such conduct would be protected as a protected concerted activity under the National Labor Relations Act. (NLRA)

Well, thanks to Neil Gorsuch’s 5-4 majority opinion in Epic Systems, helping to accommodate the disability of a coworker may not be a protected activity under the NLRA. For now at least, federal courts don’t require that employees have to exhaust administrative remedies within what amounts to a private administrative state in order to accommodate a disability. Courts seem to give more legal power to an individual alleging individualized discrimination rather than employees acting collectively about the terms and conditions of their employment.

In short, employees have some real legal rights on the job so long as they acting as individuals within the frame of anti-discrimination laws. In order to act collectively employees either need to engage in direct action like strikes — which is a whole other topic — or in the political arena.

The case against “Ghosting” for employees

Posted on August 2, 2018 by Jon Rehm

Employers are increasingly complaining of employees “ghosting” or leaving suddenly without notice. Temple Law Professor and author Brishen Rogers correctly pointed out on Twitter that employee ghosting is protected the by the 13^th Amendment prohibition of slavery. Other commentators have pointed out that employers have been “ghosting” employees for many years and that some turnabout is to be expected as unemployment declines.

Employee “ghosting” is also the flip side of employment at-will. Employers are free to fire you at any time, but you are free to quit your job at any time without notice.

The concept of giving notice before quitting isn’t rooted in any legal requirement. But giving notice before leaving a job can give employees some legal benefits. Providing written notice can provide more protections to employees if done correctly.

Unemployment

In Nebraska, if you quit your job you have to prove you had good cause for the quit to get full unemployment benefits, whereas if you are fired your employer has to prove you committed misconduct in connection with your employment to deny you full benefits. Often when an employee gives two weeks’ notice, an employer will have them stop working before the two week notice period ends. In this situation an employee, for the purposes of unemployment benefits, has been fired. So unless the employer can prove the employee committed some misconduct, then they will receive full unemployment benefits.

Putting notice in writing can be helpful because it explains why you are leaving. Under Nebraska law, there are several reasons deemed by good cause for leaving. Having one of those reasons in a letter could help you receive unemployment benefits sooner.

I recently had an employee who was asked to submit a resignation letter due to alleged concerns about her job performance. My client was smart enough to write down that she would retract her resignation if performance improved. My client ended up winning her unemployment appeal due in part to that letter as it wasn’t clear that she really intended to resign.

Other employment laws

Written notice can also help in other cases. If an employee resigns due to workplace harassment, written notice of a quit would put an employer on notice of the harassment if it wasn’t done so already. Adding in that the resignation would be retracted if the harassment was addressed would also help.

A written notice that an employee is quitting because of a medical condition could prompt an attempt to accommodate that condition under the Americans with Disabilities Act. I have seen written notice of quits because of medical conditions be helpful in winning benefits in workers’ compensation cases as well.

Giving notice is also helpful to an employee quits a new job for a new job that falls through. Courtesy can help an employee maintain a relationship with an employer and make it easier for an employee to go back to a job.

West Virginia teachers show power of collective action

Posted on April 2, 2018 by Jon Rehm

Teachers in West Virginia won a victory for working people recently after a nine-day strike forced lawmakers and their Governor to raise the pay of all public employees by 5 percent, agree to fix problems with the state’s health insurance system and maintain other employee protections.

The victory for the West Virginia teachers came shortly after many pundits predicted the downfall of public sector unions in the wake of an expected unfavorable decision from the Untied States Supreme Court in the Janus case. Many commentators pointed out that West Virginia was already a “right to work” state where unions can not compel the employees they represent to pay dues.

The West Virginia teachers strike shows the power of collective action among employees. I have long advocated that employees exercise their rights under the National Labor Relations Act to work together to address the terms and conditions of their employment. Employees don’t need a union to exercise these rights. Collective action on the job can address bullying by a boss and can even help employees accommodate a disability.

The success of the West Virginia teachers seems to have encouraged teachers in Oklahoma to plan a strike as well. The example of the West Virginia teachers should also show employees that they can deal with smaller but no less serious issues with their employer or on their worksite.

Gorsuch, Chevron and Workplace Law

Posted on February 9, 2017 by Jon Rehm

Judge Gorsuch

Employers and their attorneys are widely hailing President Trump’s nomination of 10^th Circuit Court of Appeals Judge Neil Gorsuch to the U.S. Supreme Court. Part of the reason that management-side lawyers are praising Gorsuch is his position on Chevron deference. Gorsuch’s views on Chevron could affect how workplace laws are interpreted and how they apply to workers.

Chevron deference is a legal rule that a court will give the benefit of the doubt about the interpretation of the law to how the executive agency charged with enforcing that law understands the law. Gorsuch has criticized Chevron on separation of powers basis, stating that Chevron deference gives too much power to the executive branch at the expense of the legislative and judiciary branches. Recently, government agencies have been interpreting employment laws in a way that is more favorable toward employees. Recent rules issued by the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission regarding the Americans with Disabilities Act are a prime example.

Many workers who get hurt on the job are told that they must come back to work with no restrictions. Chevron deference could be a powerful legal tool for workers faced with such policies. The new EEOC regulations on the ADA outlaw 100-percent-healed policies or policies that require plaintiffs to return to work without restrictions. In the EEOC guidance on the issue, the EEOC cites Kaufman v. Peterson Health Care VII, LLC 769 F. 3d 958 (7^th Cir. 2014) as an example of policies that they believe to be unlawful under ADAAA. This case represents a subtle but real shift from current 8^th Circuit law as stated in Fjellestad v. Pizza Hut of America, 188 F. 3d 949, 951-952 (8^th Cir. 1999) where the 8^th Circuit joined other federal circuits that held that failure to engage in an interactive process in accommodating a disability was not per se discrimination, and that there was no duty to engage in the interactive process. The EEOC’s interpretations of the new regulations still require that a plaintiff be able to perform the essential functions of the job with or without reasonable accommodation.

But as indicated by Kaufman, courts may be less likely to dismiss cases before trial, or in legal terminology, to grant summary judgment, on the issue of whether a plaintiff could perform the essential functions of the job with or without accommodation if the defendant does not engage in an interactive process or summarily decides that an employee should not be allowed to return without restrictions.

The fact that there is a split between regional appellate courts, a so-called circuit split, over “100 percent healed” policies increases the chances that the U.S. Supreme Court will decide whether 100-percent-healed policies violate the ADA. Another issue where there is a circuit split that the U.S. Supreme Court will decide is the legality of mandatory arbitration clauses in employment agreements.

Many workers unwittingly give up their rights to have employment-law disputes heard in court when they agree to mandatory arbitration clauses as a term of employment. In D.R. Horton Inc., 357 N.L.B. No 184 (2012) the National Labor Relations Board ruled that mandatory arbitration clauses prohibited Fair Labor Standards Act collective action cases because they interfered with protected concerted activity under 29 U.S.C. §157 and 29 U.S.C. § 158. In Lewis v. Epic Systems, 823 F. 3d 1147, 1154 (7^th Cir. 2016), the 7^th Circuit struck down a mandatory arbitration clause partly based on giving Chevron deference to the NLRB’s decision in D.R. Horton. The 9^th Circuit agreed with the 7^th Circuit in Morris v. Ernst and Young, LLP, No 13-16599 (Aug. 22, 2016). Unfortunately for plaintiffs, the 8^th Circuit disagreed with the D.R. Horton decision in Owen v. Bristol Care, 702 F. 3d 1050 (8^th Cir. 2013).

If confirmed, Gorsuch would be unlikely to give much weight to the opinions of the EEOC or NLRB in interpreting employment laws. Chevron deference is an unpopular concept with pro-business conservatives. Recently, the GOP-controlled House of Representatives passed legislation that, if enacted, would abolish Chevron deference.

Conversely, Chevron deference is a popular concept with progressive employee and civil-rights advocates, as it allowed the Obama administration to expand employee protections in the face of a hostile Congress. But with the advent of the Trump administration and his immigration policies, progressives have a newfound appreciation for separation of powers.

Also, employee advocates probably will not like many of the new rules and regulations issued by Trump appointees such as Labor Secretary nominee Larry Puzder. A prospective abolition of Chevron could be helpful to challenging rules made by a Trump administration. An example from the last Republican administration is instructive. In 2007, the U.S. Supreme Court in Long Island Care at Home Ltd. v. Coke, 551 U.S. 158 (2007) gave Chevron deference to Bush administration rules to exclude home health aides from coverage under the FLSA. It was nine years later that the rule was overturned, giving Chevron deference to Obama administration rules regarding home health aides and the FLSA.

Workers' Compensation Watch

Published by Rehm, Bennett, Moore & Rehm

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Tag Archives: ADA

Did the Supreme Court undercut ADA protections for employees of religious hospitals?

Who else will be excluded from civil rights laws?

Another commonality between Morrisey-Berru and Hosanna-Tabor

A return to the pre-ADAAA bad old days?

Common law employment law claims?

The problem with workers’ compensation award ceremonies

Upon further review: 2nd thoughts on the AMA 2nd

Who is going to hire me with restrictions?

Accommodation on the job for amputees draws media attention

The case against “Ghosting” for employees

West Virginia teachers show power of collective action

Gorsuch, Chevron and Workplace Law

Who else will be excluded from civil rights laws?

Another commonality between Morrisey-Berru and Hosanna-Tabor

A return to the pre-ADAAA bad old days?

Common law employment law claims?

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