reasonable accommodations


Effective April 1, 2018, for employers with six or more employees, Massachusetts’ prohibitions on discrimination in the workplace have been expanded to prohibit discrimination on the basis of pregnancy and pregnancy-related conditions. The Pregnant Workers’ Fairness Act specifically makes it unlawful to discriminate against an employee based on lactation or the need to express breast milk for a nursing child. Further, if an employee requests an accommodation for pregnancy or a pregnancy-related condition, an employer will be required to engage in a timely, good faith, “interactive process” to determine an effective, reasonable accommodation that enables the employee to be able to perform the essential functions of her position, just as an employer is required to do for an employee with a disability.

Reasonable accommodations under the new law include:

  • more frequent or longer paid or unpaid breaks;
  • time off to attend to a pregnancy complication or recover from childbirth;
  • acquisition or modification of equipment or seating;
  • temporary transfer to a less strenuous or hazardous position;
  • job restructuring;
  • light duty;
  • private non-bathroom space for expressing breast milk;
  • assistance with manual labor; and
  • a modified work schedule.

Although employers are allowed to seek medical verification for certain types of accommodations, medical … Keep reading

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Providing Temporary Accommodations for Employee Disability


It’s never easy to navigate the legal requirements when an employee has a medical condition or  disability.  One of the many complications is providing a “reasonable accommodation,” a process that often requires significant time and careful consideration of how and what medical information can be obtained and scrutinized. 

In providing accommodations, some employers hesitate to relieve employees from certain “essential job functions” temporarily while the employee is recovering from a medical condition, or while it’s unclear how long a condition will last.  Based on the First Circuit’s decision in Jones v. Walgreens, Inc., et al., however, relieving an employee temporarily from certain “essential job functions” does not require the employer to permanently eliminate those essential job functions from the employee’s job.

In Jones, plaintiff-employee Jones, a Walgreens store manager, had been on several leaves of absence from January 2004 to October 2005 after suffering a knee injury when she slipped on ice outside Walgreens’ office.  In her second leave of absence, Jones indicated that she hoped to return to work with “reasonable accommodations.”  Walgreens welcomed her back to work with some physical lifting, bending, squatting and twisting limitations.  Twenty-two months later, in October 2005, Walgreens offered her … Keep reading

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