Meeting new obligations to provide accommodations to employees

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“The Last Frontier Facing the New Frontier” Episode 3 (with Practice Pointers!)

Lea Filippi, Sedor, Wendlandt, Evans & Filippi, LLC

The primary focus of a school district does not tend to change much from year to year. Districts are always consistently working toward big goals like instilling the value of learning and teaching students the many skills necessary for social and academic success. Steady as each school district is in the pursuit of those goals for its students, each also must change with the times and keep abreast of newly developed legal obligations to the employees working toward those goals. This year there are two big changes to the scope of employee rights that school districts need to keep in mind.

The Pregnant Workers Fairness Act is a new federal law that went into effect this summer. The Pregnant Workers Fairness Act requires employers to provide reasonable accommodations to a worker’s known limitations related to pregnancy, childbirth or related medical conditions. The EEOC is still developing regulations, but the statute itself is already in effect and the EEOC has already begun processing claims that the Act has been violated. While we wait for the regulations to be adopted, school districts and other employers can stay on the right side of the law by looking to other sources like the House Committee on Education and Labor’s report on the Pregnant Workers Fairness Act for examples of possible accommodations for pregnant workers. For example, among examples from that report that were highlighted by the EEOC in an announcement regarding draft regulations are: the ability to be seated at work, to be able to drink water while working, to have closer parking, to have flexible hours, to receive additional break time to use the bathroom, eat, and rest. Employers need to be prepared to discuss potential accommodations with workers and must be careful not to deny job opportunities to qualified employees based on their need for reasonable accommodation or to require an employee to take leave if another reasonable accommodation can be provided that would let the employee keep working.

A second big change to the legal rights of employees comes from the United States Supreme Court’s decision this summer in Groff v. Dejoy regarding the rights of workers whose sincere religious observances or practices conflict with workplace requirements. The particular facts of that case involved a postal worker who started being required to work on Sundays after his employer entered a new delivery contract with Amazon. Previously courts had interpreted Title VII of Civil Rights Act of 1964 as not requiring an employer to accommodate a worker’s religious practices when doing so would impose more than a de minimus cost. Groff v. Dejoy establishes a new standard. To deny a request for religious accommodation an employer now must show the burden of accommodation is “substantial in the overall context of the employer’s business.” Going forward employers, including school districts, will need to use this standard when addressing requests from employees for reasonable accommodations based on conflict between workplace requirements and their religious practices and observances.

Practice Pointers

School board members and administrators should consider the following:

  1. When employees request accommodations in the workplace based on their personal religious beliefs and practices or based on limitations related to pregnancy or childbirth, consult your counsel to ensure that the district follows appropriate decision making processes and applies the correct standard to address those accommodation requests.
  2. Consider reviewing and updating existing personnel policies if necessary to conform to reflect the district’s new obligations under the Pregnant Workers Fairness Act and Title VII.

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