Reasonable Accommodation: Employer Must Know of Nurse's Disability Or Lawsuit Not Allowed

Legal Eagle Eye Newsletter for the Nursing Profession

 September 1997 

  However, the nurse in this case did not inform her supervisors her leave request had to do with her infertility. Her supervisors did not and could not know she considered herself disabled, and thus did not discriminate against her.   The court did not have to answer the question directly whether infertility will be recognized as a disability.   UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT, MAINE, 1997.

   No employer can be held liable for failing to accommodate an employee’s disability unless the employer has been informed or knows about the employee’s disability, the U.S. District Court for the District of Maine has ruled.

   The nurse was given the twelve weeks leave to which she was entitled under the Family and Medical Leave Act to adopt her child. Although the child was healthy, she asked to use her sick leave to take more time off. This was denied, and a disability discrimination suit resulted. The court ruled that the nurse’s infertility, why she adopted, may or may not be a legally recognized disability. The important point was that the nurse never told her supervisors she considered herself disabled and had not asked to use sick leave on that basis. Clapp vs. Hospital, 964 F. Supp. 503 (D. Me., 1997).