Is it illegal to proactively request to accommodate people? I am at a point in my career where I foresee me being involved in interviewing and hiring within the next 5 years. I am already involved in some manner with the process of terminating people because I distribute work and my input is sought regarding specific employees who are not performing well. Personally, I regularly have to deal with a mental condition that has a heavy stigma tied to it. I deal with it in a manner that works for me to the point that I foresee positive things on the horizon regarding my career. I do not reveal this condition because I don't want my career to take a hit. I can say that getting to the point I'm at with my personal mental condition required a lot of work on my part and would've been a lot easier if it were possible for me to be forthright about it and get appropriate accommodations. Some of the people whom I've had to give negative reviews on and were later terminated, I strongly suspected there may be an underlying mental condition. I don't think you can ask someone directly if they have a mental condition because this is a workplace, but can someone pro-actively inquire if any special accommodations are required (even if an employee did not request accommodation)? I don't mean a general question like, &quot;Is there anything you need?&quot; I'm specifically referring to a scenario where the employee has some sort of invisible condition that the ADA would require accommodation if requested. I would prefer to proactively inquire about their need for accommodation without requiring them to disclose whatever reason they need the accommodation.
The EEOC has an answer for your question, here. You cannot ask if the person has a disability, or anything that is likely to reveal if they have a disability. They also say that You can ask an applicant with a disability which is obvious or which the applicant disclosed if he will need a change to the work environment or to the way a job is usually done, if you reasonably believe that he will need a reasonable accommodation to perform the job. Since you're talking about invisible disabilities, there's nothing you can legally ask.
In Canada can employer force employees not to discuss wage? Not in Ontario. That would violate Section 74(1) of the Employment Standards Act, 2000: No employer or person acting on behalf of an employer shall intimidate, dismiss or otherwise penalize an employee or threaten to do so, (a) because the employee, (v.2) discloses the employee’s rate of pay to another employee for the purpose of determining or assisting another person in determining whether an employer is complying with Part XII (Equal Pay for Equal Work) See also Section 74.12(1)(a)(v.2). What if the employee signed a confidentiality agreement where they agreed not to discuss wages? The agreement would be void in that regard. See Section 5 of the same Standards: [...] [N]o employer or agent of an employer and no employee or agent of an employee shall contract out of or waive an employment standard and any such contracting out or waiver is void. The allowed exceptions are any clauses that provide a greater benefit to an employee than the employment standard (see 5(2)).
The agency is allowed a reasonable time to implement the request, given the nature of the request and surrounding circumstances. Superficially, it would seem that the request is to continue working at home as has been the case for a couple of years, so the agency would not seem to have to change anything in order to implement the request, and unnecessary delays would be a violation of ADA. There is no fixed time requirement for evaluating and implementing the request.
How should I proceed? I am asking law friends to recommend some employment lawyers, but other than this, can I do anything else? You definitely don't need an employment lawyer for this. From a legal standpoint, the matter is very simple: If you grant their request (whether by signing or otherwise expressing your acceptance), you would be waiving any remedies currently available to you for their breach of contract. The company's attempt to override its contract with you is quite naive, but the company can always (and evidently does) try to get away with its liability nonetheless. I would not be surprised if the company subsequently tries harder to intimidate you, but that does not change your legal position &amp; merits unless you sign the waiver the company is pursuing. Asking for your post-termination availability reinforces the notion of company's poor planning and subpar management.
1) Bob could disclose the PTSD condition and seek accommodation for it (in reality, controlled narcotics aren't actually used to treat PTSD but it isn't hard to imagine a situation where another controlled substance, e.g. ketamine, was used to treat this or some other Americans with Disabilities Act recognized disability and the absence of that disability was not a bona fide qualification of the job). The legal analysis in the case of the FBI (a federal government civilian civil service employer subject to special rules applicable to governmental employers), and a private employer, is not exactly the same, but it ends up in the same place. 2) Medical marijuana is, as a matter of federal law an oxymoron, because it is a Class I controlled substance that as a matter of law (contrary to reasonable facts) has no medical applications, and the FBI is charged with enforcing this law (among other agencies), so medical marijuana would legally disqualify someone from FBI employment. In Colorado which has legal under state law medical marijuana, employers have been allowed to discriminate based upon medical marijuana use because an employer is at a minimum allowed to treat federal law as enforceable. It is conceivable that some U.S. state other than Colorado which allows medical marijuana at the state level might reach a different conclusion as a matter of state law on the employment discrimination point, but potentially, the employer could appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court on a pre-emption argument so it would be a tenuous legal position to take.
This is the overview of employment discrimination by the EEOC (no legal reason for them to specifically put this under &quot;youth&quot;). To &quot;discriminate&quot; against someone means to treat that person differently, or less favorably, for some reason... The laws enforced by EEOC protect you from employment discrimination when it involves: Unfair treatment because of your race, color, religion, sex (including pregnancy, gender identity, and sexual orientation), national origin, disability, age (age 40 or older), or genetic information. Harassment by managers, co-workers, or others in your workplace, because of your race, color, religion, sex (including pregnancy, gender identity, and sexual orientation), national origin, disability, age (age 40 or older), or genetic information. A subtype of harassment is &quot;hostile environment harassment&quot;. See the EEOC page on harassment. It is unwelcome conduct that is based on race... Harassment becomes unlawful where 1) enduring the offensive conduct becomes a condition of continued employment, or 2) the conduct is severe or pervasive enough to create a work environment that a reasonable person would consider intimidating, hostile, or abusive. Also it is illegal to punish a person for complaining about harassment. On the face of it, this could constitute racial harassment. The EEOC suggests that it is illegal here, in their FAQ Are White employees protected from race discrimination even though they are not a minority? Yes. You are protected from different treatment at work on the basis of your race, whether you are White, Black, or some other race. Although this is an advisory from the Dep't of Interior and not the EEOC, it is reasonable to assume that it was at least minimally vetted by competent lawyers who know discrimination law. What is prohibited is Unwelcome conduct, verbal or physical, including intimidation, ridicule, insult, comments, or physical conduct, that is based on an individual’s protected status or protected activities under Personnel Bulletin 18-01, when the behavior can reasonably be considered to adversely affect the work environment, or an employment decision affecting the employee is based upon the employee’s acceptance or rejection of such conduct (where race is a protected status). I don't know of any case law that establishes for certain that what you describe is illegal. The ministerial exception allows a religion to follow the rules of the religion in hiring its ministers, but otherwise doesn't exempt religions from prohibitions against discrimination.
I think there's a reasonable argument to be made. ADA requires reasonable accommodations for disabilities, but there's always going to be a fight over what is reasonable. What's pretty clear, though, is that the museum is not required to make accommodations that would "threaten or destroy the historic significance of an historic property." So they'd have to think about what accommodations they can make without endangering the exhibit. To me, anyway, asking to walk up and touch it with gloves sounds reasonable; asking them to build scaffolding so you can touch every inch of it that others can see does not sound reasonable. But I'm not a conservator. It may be that even a gloved hand would endanger the exhibit. If that's the case, the accommodation is probably not a reasonable one, and you'd probably need to think about other possible compromises.
Financial institutions in the US are subject to regulations that restrict what sorts of things non-licensed employees can talk about with clients and advice they can give about structuring accounts and payments in ways that might avoid triggering money laundering alarms. I think this employee was being cautious about getting into a gray area and phrased the reason they couldn't talk about it poorly. The reason they were restricted from giving you an answer could be a legality, but not necessarily because they are giving you legal advice.