People With Diabetes, Employers Struggle With Defining Disease As Disability
January 4, 2007 – 11:21 am | posted in DiabetesPeople with diabetes must rely on a complicated set of laws and conflicting court cases to challenge discrimination in the workplace, while employers also struggle “with confusion about whether diabetes is a legitimate disability and with concerns about whether it is overly expensive, hazardous and disruptive to accommodate the illness,” the New York Times reports. The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, which enforces the Americans With Disabilities Act of 1990, says complaints related to workplace diabetes discrimination are increasing and account for 5% of the 15,000 complaints made under the act annually. Federal law does not specify any illness or handicap as a disability but requires people to demonstrate that a “major life activity,” like walking or vision, is “substantially limited.” According to the Times, the “restrictions of diabetes are often invisible,” leaving workers with diabetes “teetering on a balance beam, needing to prove they are disabled enough to fit under the law but not so impaired that they can’t do a job.” A large number of people with diabetes work in jobs “uninvolved in matters of life and death,” and a “reasonable accommodation,” such as allowing workers with diabetes to eat at their desks or excusing them from fluctuating shifts, “can make the difference in whether they can function,” the Times reports. However, businesses can be hesitant or unwilling to hire people with diabetes because of the high cost of health care coverage, safety issues related to dizziness or fainting caused by hypoglycemia and the belief that the concessions necessary for people with diabetes to function normally could breed resentment among other employees, the Times reports. In addition, courts “are of scant help in bringing clarity” to diabetes discrimination cases because judges “in nearly identical cases have ruled in completely opposite ways,” and lawyers can be reluctant to pursue such cases because discrimination can be difficult to prove, the Times reports (Kleinfield, New York Times, 12/26/06).
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