The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) recently announced a record-setting settlement resolving a class-action lawsuit against Sears, Roebuck and Co. under the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) for $6.2 million and significant remedial relief. The consent decree, approved on September 29, represents the largest ADA settlement in a single lawsuit in EEOC history. The EEOC’s suit alleged that Sears maintained an inflexible workers’ compensation leave exhaustion policy and terminated employees instead of providing them with reasonable accommodations for their disabilities in violation of the ADA.
The case arose from a discrimination charge filed with the EEOC by a former Sears service technician. According to the commission, the employee was injured on the job, took workers’ comp leave, and, although still disabled by his injuries, repeatedly attempted to return to work. The EEOC alleged that Sears never provided the employee with a reasonable accommodation that would have put him back to work and instead fired him when his leave expired. According to EEOC, discovery in the lawsuit (the pretrial exchange of evidence) revealed that hundreds of other employees who had taken workers’ comp leave were also terminated and that Sears never seriously considered reasonable accommodations to return them to work while they were on leave or seriously considered whether a brief extension of their leave would make their return possible.
In addition to providing monetary relief, the consent decree includes an injunction against violations of the ADA and retaliation. It requires that Sears amend its workers’ comp leave policy, provide written reports to the EEOC detailing its workers’ comp practices’ compliance with the ADA, train its employees regarding the ADA, and post a notice of the decree at all Sears locations.
In a press release issued at the time of the settlement, the EEOC stated, “The era of employers being able to inflexibly and universally apply a leave limits policy without seriously considering the reasonable accommodation requirements of the ADA are over. Just as it is a truism that never having to come to work is manifestly not a reasonable accommodation, it is also true that inflexible leave policies which ignore reasonable accommodations making it possible to get employees back on the job cannot survive under federal law.”
Sears denied the allegations and stated that it always acted in good faith in considering and making reasonable accommodations for its employees.