PACE Southeast Michigan to Pay $170,000 in EEOC Disability Discrimination Lawsuit.
Settles Federal Suit Charging Adult Care Provider PACE Southeast Michigan Refused to Reasonably Accommodate Employees with Disabilities.
DETROIT, MI (STL.News) PACE Southeast Michigan, a company providing all-inclusive care for the elderly, will pay $170,000 and furnish other relief to resolve a disability discrimination lawsuit filed by the U.S. Equal Opportunity Commission (EEOC), the federal agency announced recently.
According to the EEOC’s lawsuit, PACE Southeast Michigan maintained a policy which treated any employee unable to return to work following the expiration of Family and Medical Leave Act (FMLA)-allowed leave as a “voluntary resignation,” resulting in termination. Two employees requested a brief leave extension of three weeks or less to return to work following the expiration of FMLA leave and provided supporting medical documentation for the extensions. PACE refused to consider the requests and instead fired the employees. Replacements for the employees were not hired until well after the employees would have been able to return to work.
Such alleged conduct violated the American Disabilities Act of 1990 (ADA), which prohibits discrimination based on disability. The EEOC filed suit (Case No. 2:24-cv-12424) in U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Michigan after first attempting to reach a pre-litigation settlement through its conciliation process.
Under the three-year consent decree resolving the lawsuit, PACE will pay $60,000 in monetary damages to each of the two former employees, train human resources employees on compliance with the ADA, develop a reasonable accommodation policy that includes examples of additional leave as a reasonable accommodation, and submit annual reports regarding any requests for leave extensions. PACE will also provide a list of additional employees who were terminated at the conclusion of FMLA leave since the EEOC concluded its investigation. An additional $50,000 will be distributed among any of those individuals who would have qualified for a reasonable accommodation.
“A brief, finite leave extension can qualify as a reasonable accommodation under the ADA,” said Miles Uhlar, senior trial attorney for the EEOC’s Detroit Field Office. “When such a request is made, employers must engage in an interactive process and carefully evaluate whether such an extension can be granted without undue hardship to the employer.”
