Under both Maine and federal law, employers in Maine must provide a disabled employee with “reasonable accommodations” if the disabled employee needs an accommodation to do her job. One of the tricky things about getting a reasonable accommodation is that sometimes accommodations that seem reasonable to one person seem like…
Earlier this month, the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) issued new Enforcement Guidance on Pregnancy Discrimination and Related Issues which discusses legal requirements under the Pregnancy Discrimination Act (PDA), Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA), and other federal laws. According to the new Enforcement Guidance, pregnancy discrimination complaints have been…
The Maine Employee Rights Group (MERG) has filed a lawsuit against Huhtamaki, Inc. The lawsuit alleges that the company discriminated against MERG’s client Barry Kot because he has epilepsy and retaliated against him because he spoke out against the company’s discrimination. Huhtamaki is a large Finnish corporation with about 14,400 employees…
In a case that the Maine Employee Rights Group (MERG) filed against F.W. Webb Co., the U.S. District Court of Maine has found that a jury could reasonably conclude that in 2009 F.W. Webb unlawfully fired Mr. Crosby, a former truck driver based out of its South Portland location, because…
According to statistics released by the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) earlier this month, disability discrimination complaints were less common nationwide than some other forms of discrimination complaints. The EEOC received more complaints of race discrimination, sex discrimination, and unlawful retaliation than complaints of disability discrimination. In contrast, the…
A Maine Human Rights Commission (MHRC) investigator has reportedly found that the City of Belfast’s Fire and Ambulance Department violated the Maine Human Rights Act (MHRA) when it refused to provide reasonable accommodations to a former employee who had diabetes. The former employee, David Cobb, provided the Belfast Fire and…
Yesterday, the United States Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals, a court based in Virginia, held that an employee was disabled under the terms of the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) because of severe injuries he sustained to his legs that were temporary. The employee fell on a train platform and…
An investigator with the Maine Human Rights Commission (MHRC) has found that Pan Am Railways violated the disability discrimination provisions of the Maine Human Rights Act (MHRA) when it dismissed a Skowhegan man named David Crockett. According to news reports, Pan Am sent Mr. Crockett for a mental health evaluation…
Earlier this month, the Labor and Workforce Development Committee of the Massachusetts House voted in favor of a bill that would prohibit employment discrimination on the basis of height and weight. The bill would add height and weight to the list of characteristics that employers already may not use to…
Earlier this year, the Maine Human Rights Commission determined that Greyhound Lines, the bus company, violated the Maine Human Rights Act (MHRA) when it failed to provide reasonable accommodations to a passenger who needed those accommodations because she had health issues, including morbid obesity. It found that the passenger’s health…