Live Webinar: Managing the Accommodation Revolution

Presented by Saru Matambanadzo, Moise S. Steeg Jr. Associate Professor of Law at Tulane University.

An accommodation revolution has arrived in antidiscrimination law. Driven by expansive legal changes at the state and local level, we are entering a new era in which the demands of accommodations will increasingly shape the workplace. Historically, Title VII preserved employer preferences and prerogatives by requiring that all applicants for the job be qualified to perform the job and its duties without accommodation. Unlike the Americans with Disabilities Act, which defines the scope of qualified employees to include those who can perform essential job functions with an accommodation, Title VII required only the most minimal concessions from employers in terms of accommodating employees in the workplace. 

In recent years, legislative changes to the realm of antidiscrimination law have expanded the scope of accommodation protections in Title VII in crucial ways. This has come in the form of statutes and cases. The PUMP Act, passed by Congress in December of 2022, requires employers to accommodate breastfeeding employees by expanding the Fair Labor Standards Act protections for expressing milk in the workplace. The Pregnant Worker Fairness Act requires employers to accommodate pregnancy-based demands for changes in duties and expectations even when an employee may be unable to perform the essential duties of the job. In the state-based Crown Act legislation, employer preferences for personal appearance must accommodate a diversity of natural ethnic hairstyles that could previously be prohibited. And in Groff v. DeJoy, the Supreme Court has expanded employer obligations to accommodate the religious practices of employees in ways that were not protected before. 

Taken together, these moves by federal and state government actors constitute an “accommodation revolution” where employer concessions to employee needs, previously only available through the interactive process under the Americans with Disabilities Act, have increase. The future of work seems entwined with this expanding landscape for accommodations. 

This presentation examines legal changes to workplace accommodations in antidiscrimination law. Employers will need to make concessions to employee needs that were previously only available under the Americans with Disabilities Act. Are you ready for the accommodation revolution?