What I've Been Reading This Week

I think I spent less time in the office this week than I have in any other week all year.  Hard to believe so many courts wanted to have hearings this late in the year...but perhaps it is a fitting way to end 2017.  With that being said, one of the more intriguing articles I came across dealt with service or assistance animals in the workplace.  While I cannot recall working in an office (or any work environment for that matter) with a service or assistance animal before, I think this is a topic that many employers will start to be confronted with over the coming years.  While the article below does not have a definitive answer for how employers should deal with this matter, it does provide some guidance and is a useful resource to consider.

As always, below are a few articles that caught my eye this week.


Will Service or Assistance Animals in the Workplace Become the Norm?

File this one under a topic that I am on board with.  Patrick Dorian wrote an article last month that pondered whether service or assistance animals in the workplace will become considered common practice.  While this matter is still new for many employers and there is not a great deal of legal precedent to rely upon, Dorian does provide some guidance and practical things for an employer to consider.  With a lawsuit having been filed earlier this year against a company that did not let a driver trainee bring his emotional support dog on the road with him, Dorian suspects that we are likely to see this become a growing matter for employers to consider.  As noted, although the Americans with Disabilities Act does not expressly mention the use of service or assistance animals in the workplace, it is suggested that employers treat these requests the same as any other employee request for a disability related reasonable accommodation.  Although this article does not give the definitive answer for employers on the matter, it does provide some good things to consider.

Terminating An Employee With Both FMLA Leave & Unexcused Absences

Jeff Nowak at FMLA Insights used a recent case from a federal district court in Pennsylvania to consider whether an employer can lawfully terminate an employee that has FMLA leave but also accrues excessive unexcused absences.  (In the district court case, a nurse had FMLA leave but had over 10 unexcused absences over the course of a year unrelated to the reason for her FMLA leave.  Her employer had a policy in place that an employee was subject to termination when they had seven unexcused absences in a rolling 12 month period and therefore terminated the nurse.  The district court ultimately held that the nurse's termination was lawful as she had too many unexcused absences, in violation of her employer's policy, notwithstanding the fact that she had qualified for FMLA leave.)  As Nowak points out, the employer was smart to document each absence (including the reason for each absence) to establish each unexcused absence and the fact that those unexcused absences were unrelated to the reason for the nurse's FMLA leave.  Employers, as the saying often goes:  DOCUMENT, DOCUMENT, DOCUMENT.