EdLawConnect Blog

A federal district court in Massachusetts recently ruled against Harvard University in an ongoing lawsuit filed on behalf of disabled individuals challenging the accessibility of online video content on the university’s websites. (National Association of the Deaf v. Harvard University (D. Mass. March 28, 2019) 2019 WL 1409302, No. 3:15-cv-30023-KAR.) On the same day, the court issued a similar ruling in a companion lawsuit against the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, relying on the rationale from the Harvard University decision. (National Association of the Deaf v. Massachusetts Institute of Technology (D. Mass. March 28, 2019) 2019 WL 1409301, No. 3:15-cv-30024-KAR.)

On August 29, 2016, a California Court of Appeal backed away from an earlier a decision that employers must accommodate employees based on their association with individuals with a disability. (Castro-Ramirez v. Dependable Highway Express (Aug. 29, 2016) 2016 WL 45066089.) Before the court’s groundbreaking holding in April 2016, as reported in this post, no court had held that the Fair Employment ...

Drug users and alcoholics are treated differently under employment disability laws. Under the American with Disabilities Act (ADA), alcoholism is recognized as a disability. Thus, individuals suffering from alcoholism are entitled to the same protections under the ADA as someone with another qualifying physical or mental disability. On the other hand, the ADA specifically excludes from protection ...

On July 16, 2015, Governor Brown approved an amendment to Government Code section 12940 prohibiting an employer or other covered entity from retaliating, or otherwise discriminating, against a person for requesting accommodation of his or her disability or religious beliefs, regardless of whether the accommodation request was granted.

The legislation stems from the Court of Appeal’s decision in Rope ...