According to the Consent Decree attached to my LinkedIn post, a staffing firm, is agreeing to pay $1.25 million to resolve an Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) lawsuit. The lawsuit alleges that the company rejected blind or low-vision applicants.
The irony here is that the staffing firm’s business is matching people with disabilities to jobs they can do from home. 🤦🏻♂️
The EEOC alleges that the staffing firm would tell applicants who used assistive technology, such as screen readers and screen enlargers, that no jobs were available and would refuse to let them complete skill assessments, even though the staffing firm had clients who were willing to provide accommodations
According to Law360, if approved, the staffing firm “will be barred from keeping applicants from accessing its job board because they use assistive technologies, refusing to accommodate their disabilities and denying them jobs because they need accommodations. The agreement would also require NTI to contact the workers affected by the alleged discrimination to assess their job qualifications and accommodation needs in order to prioritize their placement in an available job or referral to another firm.”
Additionally, the staffing firm “will also revise its anti-discrimination and accommodation policies to ensure they comply with the ADA, develop disability discrimination training for its employees and designate an employee to serve as an ADA coordinator. Additionally, if the agreement is approved, NTI will be required to designate someone to serve as an external monitor responsible for evaluating and reporting to the EEOC about the nonprofit’s efforts to prevent disability discrimination and accommodate workers.”
Irony aside, there is a lesson here for employers: stay off the EEOC’s radar.
Settling with the EEOC is not as simple as stroking a check. In fact, EEOC settlements, which almost always come in the form of “Consent Decrees” like the one attached. The focus tends to be more on the non-monetary provisions, which as you can see in this case, can be extensive.
Here, we have extensive non-monetary requirements coupled with a large payment. That’s never a good combination.