Employers need to be careful when making hiring decisions that they don’t deny a job to a qualified individual because of a perceived disability. What matters is whether the person can do the job with or without a reasonable accommodation. Using a perceived disability as a deciding factor violates the Americans With Disabilities Act.
That point was driven home today when the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission announced it has obtained monetary relief on behalf of a North Carolina man who was offered a job at a copper tubing manufacturer, showed up for work, but then had the job taken away from him when the company’s hiring official saw that he was missing two fingers on his left hand.
The official assumed–wrongly–that the man couldn’t do the job of being a caster. So now the company, KobeWieland Copper, has agreed to pay $84,750 and provide other relief to settle the EEOC’s ADA lawsuit against it.
Read more on what not to do.
