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Thursday, November 9, 2023

Harassment for Covid Mask Request Gets Review in Fifth Circuit

 The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission will try to revive its lawsuit accusing a Texas pharmacy of disciplining, humiliating, and threatening an asthmatic worker for seeking to wear a mask at the start of the Covid-19 pandemic.

The EEOC is set to appear at oral argument Wednesday at the US Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit to challenge a lower court’s ruling that the former US Drug Mart Inc. worker experienced an isolated incident of verbal harassment that didn’t amount to a hostile work environment under the Americans with Disabilities Act.

The case gives the appeals court an opportunity to clarify what sort of employer conduct gives rise to a legitimate claim of a hostile work environment.

Almost all circuit courts have said hostile work environment claims are available for disability-related bias and follow the same legal standard as those brought under Title VII of the 1964 Civil Rights Act, said Nicole Buonocore Porter, a disability law scholar who directs the Martin H. Malin Institute for Law & the Workplace at Chicago-Kent College of Law.

The federal judge who threw out the EEOC’s lawsuit against US Drug Mart cited both ADA and Title VII cases.

https://news.bloomberglaw.com/daily-labor-report/harassment-for-covid-mask-request-gets-review-in-fifth-circuit

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