Does an employer have to accommodate an employee who needs an accommodation in order to better support a family member with a disability? Does a college student have to pay for a standard meal plan if they have requested an exemption? On this week's addition of Ask About the ADA, we explore these questions that we have received at the Northeast ADA's technical assistance telephone line.
https://www.northeastada.org/multimedia/podcasts
Does an employer have to accommodate an employee who needs an accommodation in order to better support a family member with a disability? Does a college student have to pay for a standard meal plan if they have requested an exemption? On this week's addition of Ask About the ADA, we explore these questions that we have received at the Northeast ADA's technical assistance telephone line.
https://www.northeastada.org/multimedia/podcasts
SPEAKER: Hello. Welcome to Ask About the ADA, the podcast where we answer your questions about the Americans with Disabilities Act and how it applies to your everyday life.
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On this week's edition of Ask About the ADA, we have questions about reasonable accommodations on the job as well as an accommodation, otherwise known as an academic adjustment, for a college student. So with that being said, let's dig into these two Ask About the ADA questions.
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My son is in school and has a disability. The place where I work requires me to park about three miles away or so and then take a shuttle into the actual physical workplace. This has severely restricted my ability to respond if something happens with my son and I need to leave work quickly. I've raised this concern with human resources and that there may be times where there's an emergency where I need to leave quickly. Do I have any recourse? Is my employer required to accommodate me?
Well, the answer to this question is no. Unfortunately, the Americans with Disabilities Act in the employment provisions of the law do not require an employer to accommodate the family members of an individual. So while an employee or applicant with a disability might require a reasonable accommodation from an employer and have that protection under the ADA, there is no similar protection to accommodate family members of individuals who are applying.
So the unfortunate answer in this case for the person who wrote in this question to us was that, no, the employer is not required to allow an accommodation for this instance. Now that being said, there's nothing to prohibit an employer from making such an accommodation, but there's no requirement as far as the Americans with Disabilities Act is concerned.
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And let's go to our second question, where a person again asks a question on behalf of their son. In this question, however, it's for a son who is in college. The college that the son attends has a meal plan. However, the son has food allergies and would like to opt out of the mandatory meal plan from the college or university. The school has said that the committee who will determine whether or not this fee will be waived will not meet until after the family has to put down a non-refundable deposit on the meal plan. So the parent ask, in this instance, can they do this?
Well, the answer to that question is not 100% clear. However, there's a couple of things to keep in mind. Under the Americans with Disabilities Act, Title II and Title III entities are not permitted to have surcharges for accommodations. And so what does that mean exactly?
Well, first of all, keep in mind that Title II of the ADA applies to state and local governments, while Title III applies to basically most businesses. The term is "public accommodations." So that would cover colleges and universities that are either private in nature, or in the case of Title II, colleges that are controlled by the state or at community level. So it basically covers almost all colleges and universities.
I mentioned that they cannot impose surcharges, so let me explain a little bit more what that means. A surcharge is a fee to provide an accommodation. In other words, under the ADA, organizations that are mandated to provide academic adjustments, accommodations, or other auxiliary aids and services are not permitted to charge to provide those services. And so in this particular instance, the university or college may potentially be seen as imposing a surcharge to accommodate the student with a disability.
In other words, they're not going to offer a decision about whether or not they will accommodate the student until after the person is required to put a down payment. If the decision was made that the requirement to be part of the meal plan was waived, then the person would not get their money back. So that would be an issue. So it's not 100% clear, but this is definitely an area where a college or university should proceed cautiously and really look at their requirements under the law and also, perhaps if necessary, to expedite the process in order to make a decision in a reasonable time frame.
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Well, that's it for this week's edition of Ask About the ADA. I hope you found some of the topics we talked about today informative and interesting. As always, we encourage you to reach out to us if you have any questions, and we'd be glad to feature them on a future podcast. You can find us at northeastada.org. You can email us at northeastada@cornell.edu. And of course, if you're in New York, New Jersey, Puerto Rico, or the US Virgin Islands, you can contact us at 1-800-949-4232. And always look for us on social media, you can get a hold of us that way if you want to as well.
Meanwhile, I'd like to thank our producer for the show, Grace Fairchild, who always does an excellent job. Thank you also to Peter Quinn of the Yang-Tan Institute's media team for doing polishing on the podcast. And thank you all for listening and being a part of the conversation.
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