Many families are touched by disability in one way or another, whether it’s a parent managing a health condition, a young adult entering the workforce, or a loved one advocating for equal opportunities at work. Understanding disability discrimination is important because fair treatment in the workplace can have a direct impact on a family’s financial stability, well-being, and quality of life.
As reported by the Bureau of Labor Statistics, 22.8% of employed people are disabled in 2025. Despite progress in workplace inclusion, many individuals with disabilities still face barriers when seeking employment or advancing in their careers. Federal laws such as the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) and the Rehabilitation Act help protect workers from discrimination and ensure they have access to reasonable accommodations when needed.
Before initiating a lawsuit, understanding the actionable forms of discrimination is important. Knowledge of the ADA’s definition of disability is even more critical to the subject. Let’s take a look at some examples of disability discrimination at work.
Who Is Protected: The ADA’s Three-Part Definition of Disability
Not every medical condition counts as a disability under the ADA. Federal law basically lays out disability in three different ways, and a person can get ADA coverage under any one of those.
To start, if someone has a real physical or mental impairment that substantially limits one or more major life activities, then they’re covered. A cancer survivor or someone with a history of psychiatric hospitalization can still be covered even when they are in remission or otherwise not actually impaired at the moment. A person can also be covered if they are regarded as disabled by their employer. This type of coverage applies to individuals who do not have qualifying impairment but are still offered by their employers disability benefits.
According to Fort Lauderdale disability discrimination lawyer Michelle Cohen Levy, to comply with ADA regulations, employers are required to provide necessary assistance to such disabled people. Reasonable accommodation is the provision of a workplace modification that assists a qualified disabled employee to function sufficiently and have equality in employment.
The ADA Amendments Act of 2008 demonstrated a new approach to defining disability, correcting the narrowing of concepts that arose as a result of the Supreme Court’s decisions on the ADA.
Following the introduction of the new laws, the courts must interpret the definition of disability more liberally. Whether a person is disabled or not should be a straightforward and easy assessment to make. Conditions that show up in episodes, or are currently in remission, are supposed to be judged based on their active stage.
Disparate Treatment Discrimination
Disparate treatment discrimination shows up when an employer does an adverse employment action like termination, promotion denial, or a sudden transfer based on an employee’s actual disability, their perceived disability, or even their history of disability. The victim will need to prove that these unlawful actions were the motivating factors behind the decision.
Usually, evidence of disparate treatment is related to when the disability was disclosed. This treatment can show how similarly situated employees without disabilities were treated, what the decision makers actually said about the disability, and where the employer deviated from normal steps in the discipline or termination process.
Medical inquiries and medical examinations are a very particular kind of disparate treatment, and the ADA regulates them in a separate way. Before the employer makes a conditional offer of employment, they can’t ask disability-related questions or insist on a medical examination. Once a conditional offer is made, medical examinations are allowed only if the same kind of exam is required for all employees in the same job category.
After employment starts, any disability-related questions and any medical exams have to be job-related. These procedures must also line up with business necessity. If the employer asks a current employee whether they have a specific condition or require a medical examination without a business justification, that is seen as a violation by itself.
Failure to Accommodate: The Affirmative Obligation
The most distinctive thing about disability discrimination law, compared with other employment discrimination frameworks, is that the employer has an affirmative obligation to provide reasonable accommodation.
The employer must make changes to the work setting, job duties, day-to-day schedule, or equipment so a qualified employee with a disability can do the important functions of their role. Failure to accommodate would be valid if doing so places an undue hardship on the employer’s actual operations.
Reasonable accommodations can cover a pretty broad range of adjustments. Here are the examples:
- Schedule modifications: part-time or altered work schedules, leave for medical appointments, and even flexible start and stop times when someone’s condition needs variable timing.
- Physical modifications: getting accessible equipment, tweaking workstations, and providing reserved parking that’s closer to the building entrance.
- Job restructuring: shifting minor job tasks to the disabled worker while still keeping their key functions intact.
- Reassignment: moving the person to an equivalent vacant position for which they’re qualified, if accommodation in the current role just isn’t workable. This transfer option is viewed as the accommodation of last resort once the other pathways have been exhausted.
- Remote work: the expansion of remote work infrastructure has made telework more and more feasible as a reasonable accommodation for employees whose condition makes commuting or staying in the office difficult.
The undue hardship defense lets an employer turn down an accommodation that would create significant trouble or expense. Undue hardship is judged case by case, so an alteration that feels undue for a small operation may end up being totally workable for a big employer, and so on.
Employers who want to use the undue hardship claim have to show it with specifics. Simply making a vague statement that the accommodation would be burdensome is not enough to meet the law’s requirements.
When an employee asks for an accommodation, the ADA requires both sides to do what is basically an interactive process. There should be a discussion concerning defining the affected employee’s functional limits and which accommodations might actually help. If an employer refuses to join that discussion, denies the request without looking at other options, or punishes the employee who asked for an accommodation, then that employer has gone against the ADA.
Failure to Accommodate: The Groff v. DeJoy Parallel
As noted in the religious discrimination context, the Supreme Court’s 2023 ruling in Groff v. DeJoy shifted the undue hardship standard for religious accommodation. The parallel ADA undue hardship standard still requires showing significant difficulty or expense, and it has always been higher than the Title VII religious accommodation standard.
There’s no real functional change to ADA accommodation law from the Groff case, but the outcome creates a more consistent framework. Both religious and disability accommodation requests need genuine engagement and also some substantiated hardship before denial can even make sense.
Hostile Work Environment and Harassment
Disability-based harassment can set up a hostile work environment in basically the same way that applies to race and sex harassment under Title VII. The behavior has to be linked to the disability.
A hostile work environment must significantly disrupt existing work conditions. It needs to come from either a supervisor or a co-worker. It often involves a case wherein the employer was already notified about the situation but the worker receives no meaningful response.
Disability-based harassment often shows up as remarks about an employee’s condition or their limits. They are observed as different actions like copying or mimicking physical limitations. Another example would be keeping a disabled employee out of group activities and giving unwanted attention to the employee’s medical care or disability-related absences.
Filing a Disability Discrimination Claim
Title I ADA employment discrimination claims empower an individual to file an EEOC charge within 180 days after the discriminatory act. This timeline can stretch to 300 days in states that have their own disability discrimination agency. The whole administrative exhaustion setup, the right-to-sue letter, and the 90 day window after the letter are pretty much the same as what you see for race and sex discrimination claims under Title VII.
Also, the EEOC has ADA resources that go into detail about what counts as a disability, which accommodations are required, and how you actually submit the charge. As for Title II and Title III, claims tied to public services and places of public accommodation are handled through the Department of Justice or you file in federal court. These cases have different procedures depending on the situation and the kind of relief you’re aiming for.
Final Thoughts on Disability Discrimination
For many families, employment is about more than earning a paycheck. It provides security, independence, and opportunities for the future. When disability discrimination occurs, it can affect not only the employee but also the loved ones who rely on them.
Understanding the protections offered by the ADA can help workers, caregivers, and family members recognize when rights may have been violated and what steps can be taken to address the situation. Whether the issue involves denied accommodations, unfair treatment, or workplace harassment, knowing the law is an important first step toward ensuring equal opportunities for everyone in the workplace.
These changes would give the article a stronger family-centered perspective while preserving the legal and educational focus of the original content.
0
Leave a Reply