The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission ("EEOC") sued Roland Park Rehabilitation and Healthcare Center, a residential health care facility in Baltimore City, and Atlas Healthcare, the management company operating Roland Park RHC. The EEOC alleged that a certified nursing assistant in Baltimore informed her employer that she was pregnant and provided medical restrictions that temporarily limited her ability to lift and move patients.
The EEOC alleges that, instead of considering alternative tasks or light-duty assignments, the facility terminated the nursing assistant's employment and told her she could reapply after her pregnancy, pointing to a policy that reserved light-duty work for employees with work-related injuries.
The EEOC alleges that this conduct constitutes unlawful sex and pregnancy discrimination and violates federal protections for pregnant workers, including obligations to provide reasonable accommodations absent undue hardship.
Source: https://www.eeoc.gov/newsroom/eeoc-sues-roland-park-rehabilitation-and-healthcare-center-and-atlas-healthcare-sex-and
Commentary
Light-duty work in healthcare settings should be structured to reduce injury risk and liability exposure by accommodating all qualifying disabilities and pregnancy-related limitations, not just work-related injuries.
Limiting light duty solely to occupational injuries can create significant discrimination risk under federal and state disability and pregnancy protection laws, particularly when similarly-situated employees with comparable restrictions are treated differently based only on the source of the limitation.
A safer loss prevention approach is to adopt and consistently enforce a neutral, written light-duty policy that evaluates restrictions and accommodation needs on an individualized basis, incorporates an interactive process, and expressly covers pregnancy, temporary medical conditions and disabilities arising both on and off the job.
Such a policy should align with reasonable accommodation obligations, focus on essential job functions rather than diagnosis, and document decisions to demonstrate non-discriminatory, risk-aware reasoning that withstands regulatory and litigation scrutiny.
