EEOC Releases New Guidance on Hearing Disabilities

February 24, 2023

By: Trevor Brice, Esq.

On Jan. 24, the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) released new guidance for employers on how and when to accommodate applicants and employees with hearing disabilities.

The guidance covers when an employer may ask an applicant or employee questions about a hearing condition and how it should treat voluntary disclosures of a condition, what types of reasonable accommodations applicants or employees with hearing disabilities may need, how an employer should handle safety concerns about applicants and employees with hearing disabilities, and how an employer can ensure that no employee is harassed because of a hearing disability or any other disability.


This guidance is an update to the original guidance that the EEOC released regarding accommodations for deafness and hearing disabilities in the workplace on May 7, 2014.


Questioning Employees and Applicants on Hearing Disabilities

In general, before offering an individual a job, avoid asking the applicant about hearing disabilities or any disabilities or requiring an applicant to have a medical examination before a conditional job offer. However, the limited exception to this general rule is if an applicant has an obvious impairment or has voluntarily disclosed an impairment, and the employer reasonably believes that the applicant will require an accommodation to complete the application process or to perform the job because of the condition.


If this is the case, the employer may ask if the applicant will need an accommodation and what type. However, as a best practice in the pre-offer stage, it is prudent for an employer to stick to questions about the applicant’s ability to perform the position’s essential functions, with or without reasonable accommodation, such as whether the applicant can respond quickly to instructions in a noisy, fast-paced work environment.


After making a conditional job offer, an employer may ask questions about the applicant’s health (including questions about an applicant’s disability, including deafness and hearing disabilities) and may require a medical examination as long as all applicants for the same type of job are subjected to the same requirement.


For current employees, an employer may ask disability-related questions or require an employee to have a medical examination when the employer knows about a particular employee’s medical condition, has observed performance problems, and reasonably believes that the performance problems are related to a medical condition. However, the EEOC notes that employers should take precautions in this situation, as performance problems often are unrelated to a medical condition, and the problems should be handled in accordance with the employer’s existing policies regarding performance.


Regarding hearing conditions for current employees, an employer also may ask an employee about a hearing condition when it has a reasonable belief that the employee will be unable to safely perform the essential functions of the job because of it. Further, an employer may ask an employee about their hearing to the extent necessary to support the employee’s request for accommodations, to enable the employee to participate in a voluntary wellness program, or to verify the employee’s use of sick leave related to a hearing condition if the employer requires all employees to submit a doctor’s note to justify their use of sick leave.


Possible Accommodations and Safety-related Exclusions

The EEOC suggests several reasonable accommodations that could be suggested or employed for hearing-disabled individuals. This non-exhaustive list includes a sign-language interpreter for use in interviews or during employment, assistive technology (including video relay or video remote interpreting services, hearing-aid-compatible telephone headsets, etc.), appropriate written memos and notes, note-taking assistance, work-area adjustments (moving a desk away from a noisy area, for example), time off, altering non-essential job functions, and reassignment to a vacant position.


Employers should remember that there is no magic word for requesting a reasonable accommodation; an individual simply has to tell the employer that he or she needs an adjustment or change at work because of an impairment. Employers do not have to provide reasonable accommodations if doing so would be an undue hardship, meaning that providing reasonable accommodation would result in significant difficulty or expense. Additionally, employers do not have to eliminate an essential function of a job, tolerate poor performance, or excuse violations of conduct to provide reasonable accommodations.


There is another consideration for employees with hearing disabilities. Employers may also exclude an individual with a hearing disability from a job for safety reasons when the individual poses a direct threat, which is defined as a significant risk of substantial harm to the individual or others because of a disability that cannot be eliminated or reduced through reasonable accommodations. If an employer believes there is such a direct threat, the employer should conduct an individualized assessment of the individual’s present ability to perform the essential functions of the job.


Considerations should include the duration of the risk, the nature and severity of potential harm, the likelihood that the potential harm will occur, and the imminence of the potential harm. The harm must be serious and likely to occur, not remote and speculative. Finally, the employer must consider whether any reasonable accommodations, such as the ones above, would reduce or eliminate the risk of direct threat. The EEOC provides examples of how this balancing test should work.


If employers have questions relating to this balancing test, or regarding the new guidance for hearing disabilities or disabilities and reasonable accommodations in general, it is prudent to contact legal counsel in order to avoid any potential liability.


This article was published by Healthcare News. Click here to visit their website.

When Bias Creeps into Independent Investigations It All Becomes Tainted.

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Case Overview: An Asian-American postal worker, Dawn Lui, allegedly became the target of a racial and gender-based harassment campaign after being assigned to lead a new location in 2014. Lui started working at the United States Postal Service (USPS) in 1992 and was promoted to postmaster in 2004, without issue or complaints. Both Lui and her supervisor agree that the coworkers at her new location called her racially motivated names, created false complaints and racially based rumors like that she couldn’t read or speak English, and created a rumor that she was engaging in a sexual relationship with her supervisor. Lui states that she was interviewed in an internal investigation about the alleged sexual relationship. She believes the allegations were created because the supervisor in question is married to an Asian woman. The supervisor claims that HR disregarded his complaints about racial bias regarding the employee. Where They Went Wrong: HR and labor relations officials proposed a demotion for Lui based off of the contested allegations. The demotion required Lui’s supervisor’s signature to move forward. The supervisor refused to sign the demotion and again brought up his concerns that the allegations were baseless and racially motivated. Because of his refusal to sign the demotion paperwork, he was temporarily removed from his position and replaced. His replacement signed off on the demotion and an investigation was not launched after the supervisor’s refusal. Lui appealed the demotion internally and a “neutral” official started an “independent” investigation. USPS argued that this investigation cleared them of making racial and sex based discriminatory actions. Given the possible racial bias and demotion that occurred in this case, Lui filed suit against USPS alleging disparate treatment, a hostile work environment, and unlawful retaliation under Title VII. After the United States District Court for the District of Washington granted summary judgment to USPS on all of the Plaintiff’s claims, the case was appealed to the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit. The Ninth Circuit affirmed the USDC’s granting of summary judgment on the retaliation claim, but they found the USDC erred in their finding that the Plaintiff failed to establish a prima facie case of discrimination when they issued summary judgment on the disparate treatment and hostile work environment claims. The Ninth Circuit found that Lui had been removed from her position and demoted to a smaller location with a pay cut, and she was replaced by a white man with less experience. The Ninth Circuit also found that there was a genuine dispute of material fact regarding whether the decision to demote Lui was independent or influenced by subordinate bias. The official never interviewed witnesses, ignored the reports about racial bias, and solely went off the existing reports used in the original decision. The concerns that the employee’s supervisor raised that the allegations were fabricated and racially motived had not been investigated or addressed. The court ruled that a jury could reasonably find that the “independent” investigation wasn’t truly independent. The Court relied heavily on the Cat’s Paw theory of liability. The Cat’s Paw Theory is an employment discrimination doctrine name after the fable “the Monkey and the Cat” by Jean de La Fontaine. In the fable the cat is enticed by the monkey to retrieve chestnuts from the embers of a fire so they both can share. In the fable the monkey eats the chestnuts while the cat has nothing but burned paws. It came to refer to someone doing dirty work on another’s behalf. It made its way into employment law in Staub v. Proctor Hospital, 562 U.C. 411 (2011). An employer can be held liable for discrimination if the information used in the employment decision was based off a biased supervisor, or other biased employee. Even if the ultimate decision maker was not biased, the information remains tainted. Employer Takeaways: Independent investigations are only independent when an independent investigator re-reviews the information available and interviews witness(es) directly. Having an investigator blindly sign off on an investigation that others allege to be racially motivated without due diligence to verify a lack of bias allows bias to seep into employment decisions. If a separate investigation had been conducted, with fresh interviews from a non-biased 3 rd party, the decision would have been free of the original allegations, and the employer would have avoided liability in subsequent suit. If your business has any questions on this topic or any other matters, please do not hesitate to contact the attorneys at The Royal Law Firm at 413-586-2288.

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