Addiction and Your Job

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The Americans With Disabilities Act OpensDoors--Maybe

Who Is Covered

Effective July 1994, the ADA covers companies with 15 or more employees. Its coverage extends to private employers, employment agencies and labor organizations.

The Act protects workers who, although disabled in some way, are still qualified for a particular job -- that is, they can perform the essential functions of a job, although they may need some form of accommodation. Whether a disabled worker is deemed qualified for a job seems to depend on whether he or she has appropriate skill, experience, training or education for the position.

The ADA defines a disabled person as someone who:

• has a physical or mental impairment that substantially limits a major life activity
• has a record of impairment, or
• is regarded as having an impairment.

The stunning vagueness of this list helps make clear why the law provokes such consternation. A few of the intended meanings of the terms in this definition were hinted at during the congressional debates on the legislation, but most willhave to be hammered out in the courts over time.

Disabilities Covered

The ADA specifically protects workers with AIDS, HIV infection, alcoholism, cancer, cerebral palsy, diabetes, emotional illness, epilepsy, hearing and speech disorders, heart disorders, learning disabilities such as dyslexia, mental retardation, muscular dystrophy and visual impairments.

A number of other conditions can be protected under the ADA if the employee can prove that they are limiting in some way. To be covered, an individual's condition must restrict a life activity -- broadly defined as the ability to walk, talk, see, hear, speak, breathe, sit, stand, reach, reason, learn, work or care for himself or herself. However, the ADA does not cover conditions that impose short-term limitations, such as pregnancy or broken bones.

Because discrimination often continues even after the effects of a disability have abated, the ADA prohibits discrimination against those who have had impairments in the past -- including rehabilitated drug addicts and recovering alcoholics.

In recognition of the fact that discrimination often stems from prejudice or irrational fear, the ADA protects job applicants and workers who have no actual physical or mental impairment, but may be viewed by others as disabled-- for example, someone who is badly scarred or epileptic. The ADA also attempts to clamp down on taint by association. For example, an otherwise qualified worker cannot be denied employment because a brother, roommate or close friend has AIDS.

The ADA ban on discrimination against job applicants and employees extends to a number of specific situations: pre-employment screening tests, insurance benefits and segregation on the job.

Side Bar--Is Obesity a Disability? Too Soon to Tell

Courts that have been called upon to decide whether overweight people are disabled within the meaning of state disability laws and the ADA have split on the issue.

Some courts have held that all overweight workers are physically impaired -- and thus entitled to be protected from discrimination under disability laws. Some courts have opined that overweight workers are protected by disability laws only if there is some medical evidence showing that the weight gain is due to a physiological condition. And a third line of legal reasoning holds that only morbidly obese workers -- those 100% or more over normal weight -- are entitled to the laws' protections.

When asked to provide some guidance, the federal Equal Employment Opportunities Commission (EEOC) was noncommittal -- stating only that obesity claims would be considered "on a case by case basis."

Accommodations By Employers

The core of the ADA requires employers to make accommodations -- changes to the work setting or the way jobs are done -- so that disabled people can work. This is what initially got employers up in arms over its passage. The law also specifies that an employer cannot reject a disabled worker solely because he or she would need a reasonable accommodation -- a reserved handicapped parking space, a modified work schedule, a telephone voice amplifier -- to get the job done.

In reality, a disabled individual who wants a particular job must become somewhat of an activist. The law does not require an employer to propose reasonable accommodations -- only to provide them. The onus of suggesting workable and affordable changes to the workplace is on the employee who wants the accommodation.

Specific accommodations likely to be deemed reasonable, and required by the ADA, include:

• Making existing facilities usable by disabled employees -- for example, by modifying the height of desks and equipment, installing computer screen magnifiers, installing telecommunications for the deaf.
• Restructuring jobs -- for example, allowing a 10-hour/4-day work week so that a worker can receive weekly medical treatments.
• Modifying exams and training material -- for example, allowing moretime for taking an exam, or allowing it to be taken orally instead of in writing.
• Providing a reasonable amount of additional unpaid leave for medical treatment.
• Hiring readers or interpreters to assist an employee.
• Providing temporary workplace specialists to assist in training.

The law does not require employers to make accommodations that would cause them an undue hardship -- a weighty concept defined in the ADA only as "an action requiring significant difficulty or expense." If a dispute went to the EEOC or to a court to be resolved, an employer who wanted to show that an accommodation would present an undue hardship would have to demonstrate that it was too costly, extensive or disruptive to be adopted in that workplace.