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Harris, Seth D.; Stein, Michael Ashley --- "Workplace Disability" [2009] ELECD 414; in Dau-Schmidt, G. Kenneth; Harris, D. Seth; Lobel, Orly (eds), "Labor and Employment Law and Economics" (Edward Elgar Publishing, 2009)

Book Title: Labor and Employment Law and Economics

Editor(s): Dau-Schmidt, G. Kenneth; Harris, D. Seth; Lobel, Orly

Publisher: Edward Elgar Publishing

ISBN (hard cover): 9781847207296

Section: Chapter 12

Section Title: Workplace Disability

Author(s): Harris, Seth D.; Stein, Michael Ashley

Number of pages: 19

Extract:

12 Workplace disability
Seth D. Harris and Michael Ashley Stein


1 Introduction
The key United States law regulating employment discrimination against
employees with disabilities is the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA).
Title I of the ADA prohibits employment discrimination against any
`qualified individual with a disability'. This proscription includes tradi-
tional prohibitions of `disparate treatment' and `disparate impact'. Stewart
Schwab's chapter in this volume examines the economics of these forms of
employment discrimination and efforts to regulate them (Chapter 10).
Another form of employment discrimination prohibited by the ADA
is the failure to provide a `reasonable' workplace `accommodation' to a
qualified individual with a disability. The statute defines those individuals
as workers who are capable of performing the essential job functions of
the respective positions sought, either with or without provision of rea-
sonable accommodations. Because reasonable accommodations are the
focus of scholarly and political debate over the ADA, while also being the
main innovation in disability employment discrimination worldwide, this
chapter will focus on accommodations.
As noted by Stein (2000, 2003, 2004), reasonable accommodations
encompass a wide range of adjustments to existing workplace conditions,
but mainly fall into one or both of two categories. The first category
requires the alteration of the physical plant or equipment, such as ramping
a stair to accommodate the needs of an employee who uses a wheelchair.
These types of accommodations involve `hard' costs, meaning that they
impose readily quantifiable out-of-pocket costs on employers. Purchasing
and installing a ramp, for example, ...