Legal News

Who?s Disabled? Feds Expand the Definition

By Nathan Koppel

Labor and employment lawyers are busy Friday reading, parsing,  fretting, lecturing and a few other present participles after the EEOC yesterday issued new regulations governing when employees qualify as disabled.

The immediate question that springs to mind is who are the winners under the new regs: employees or employers? It’s not so easy to say.

The regulations cite particular impairments, including HIV infection, diabetes, epilepsy, and bipolar disorder, that “should easily be concluded to be disabilities.”

The regulations, Bloomberg reports, will make it easier for employees to win workplace accommodations.

And that, of course, is a win for employees, right?  Law firm Seyfarth Shaw, which specializes in defending employment cases, thinks so.  “More disability lawsuits can be expected to be filed, and importantly, those lawsuits will become much harder to defend against at an early pleading stage,” Seyfarth attorney Condon McGlothlen said in a statement.

Disability claims already were on the rise last year, Bloomberg reports, noting that there were about 25,000 disability discrimination claims in fiscal year 2010, up from 21,400 the previous year.

Gary Phelan, a Connecticut lawyer with Cohen and Wolf who primarily represents employees, told the Law Blog that the new regs should broaden disability coverage “at the margins.”

For example, he said, people who suffer from conditions in remission, such as cancer, are now likelier to be able to bring claims. “In those cases where there are close calls about whether an individual meets the definition of disability, more employees will be covered under the Americans with Disabilities Act.”

Still, Phelan said that the Chamber of Commerce gave a nod of approval to the new regs. Michael Eastman, director of labor law for the Chamber, told Bloomberg that the new disability terms should not be onerous for companies.

Proskauer partner Lawrence  Lorber, an employment defense lawyer, also told the Law Blog that he was not terribly troubled. “This has no serious negative implications for employers,” he said.

This much can be said with certainty: the EEOC’s rule making will spur many, many email alerts and Webinars from law firms.

Full post as published by Law Blog - WSJ.com on March 25, 2011 (boomark / email).