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The EEOC takes discrimination against women because of their unique reproductive characteristics seriously, as a recent lawsuit settlement shows.

The ADA doesn’t set a time limit for the reasonable accommodations process, but assumes that everybody will act in good faith. So when the process takes too long, the employee can sue, alleging failure to accommodate.

Generally, when an employee doesn’t return medical certification paperwork required to begin FMLA leave within 15 days, employers can deny the leave request. But there are circumstances under which the employee may have more time.

Under the ADA, workers with disabilities who aren’t yet eligible for leave or who have used up their accrued leave and FMLA entitlement may be able to take more time off as a reasonable accommodation. However, there is no ADA right to indefinite leave.

The Supreme Court’s 2023 decision in Groff v. DeJoy made it much harder for employers to justify denying an employee’s request for religious accommodations. Since then, most refusal-to-vaccinate lawsuits have been settled in favor of employees.

Enforce your dress and grooming code too rigidly and you could find yourself on the losing end of a failure-to-accommodate lawsuit. Here’s a case showing that common medical problems may require employers to bend their dress-code rules to accommodate employee disabilities.

Some forms of ADA accommodation don’t directly affect essential job functions. Instead, they help employees manage their disabilities.

Employers can require employees accused of violence at work to take a drug test. But what happens if the test reveals the presence of marijuana in the system of an employee whose use of medical marijuana is authorized by state law?

The ADA requires employers to engage in an interactive process to figure out if a reasonable accommodation will let a disabled employee perform the essential functions of her job. The employer gets to choose the accommodation. If, after trying possible accommodations, the employee still can’t do her job, the employer can terminate her.

An employee with a medical issue may be disabled and entitled to reasonable accommodations but doesn’t have to request one. It’s enough that he lets someone in management know about the condition and requests a change in the workplace.