Terminating the Employment Relationship

An employer may consider the impact of an accommodation on the ability of other employees to do their jobs. However, an employer may not claim undue hardship solely because providing an accommodation has a negative impact on the morale of other employees. 155 It is difficult to maintain a disabled employee’s confidentiality when co-workers wonder why the employee receives “special” treatment. Co-workers who do not know an employee is disabled may become very unhappy if they are asked to take on additional functions. Informing employees that the public agency complies with all relevant laws and that co-workers may be receiving accommodations might reduce this possibility. Restructuring a job to accommodate an individual with a disability, which in turn, results in a heavier workload for other employees may constitute an undue hardship. But employee complaints about disabled individuals’ use of unpaid leave or a special flexible work schedule do not constitute an undue hardship. Employee objections to working with an individual who has a disability because the employee feels uncomfortable or dislikes being near this person does not constitute an undue hardship. In this case, the hardship is caused by the employee’s fear or prejudice toward the individual's disability, not by the accommodation. 156 Nor can an employer claim undue hardship because of “disruption” due to employees’ fears about, or prejudices toward, a person’s disability. For example:

The following is an example of the parameters of the undue hardship limitation contained in the Senate Report:

[A] small day care center might not be required to expend more than a nominal sum, such as that necessary to equip a telephone for use by a secretary with impaired hearing. But a large school district might be required to make available a teacher's aide to a blind applicant for a teaching job. Further, it might be considered reasonable to require a State Welfare agency to accommodate a deaf employee by providing an interpreter. While it would constitute an undue hardship to impose that same requirement on a provider of foster home care services. 157

One court held that providing its blind income maintenance workers with part-time readers was not an undue hardship because the Department of Public Welfare already employed clerks who could work as part-time readers, costing the Department an additional $6,638 a year for each blind worker. This was not undue hardship on an entity that had a budget of approximately $300 million. 158

Terminating the Employment Relationship ©2019 (s) Liebert Cassidy Whitmore 53