6.11 IV. Employment Discrimination

• Library: Disability Law and Practice, Vol. 3 (NY) 2017

IV. EMPLOYMENT DISCRIMINATION

The unemployment and underemployment that the deaf experience are due partly to deficiencies in educational services,⁹⁷ but also result from barriers that vigorous enforcement of the ADA can substantially eliminate.

Reasonable accommodations for a deaf person may mean that an employer needs to modify the communication methods used in testing and training, restructure job duties to eliminate telephone functions, permit telephone work to be done by TTY or relay, and/or provide interpreters for staff meetings and training programs. Refusal to take such actions can be motivated by bias, paternalism or indifference, and can be successfully challenged.

In a 1994 case, a deaf man whose lip-reading skills were excellent but whose speech was difficult to understand until the listener became accustomed to it, brought suit under the Rehabilitation Act against the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) for failing to promote him. The judge in Meisser v. Hove⁹⁸ noted that

[T]he FDIC [failed to show] that it would be difficult to adjust plaintiff’s duties so that oral communication would be less important. . . . [A]t key moments the dominant attitude [at FDIC] appears to have been one of indifference or inaction. . . . [T]he agency as a whole has utterly failed in its duty to pay attention to plaintiff’s needs and to give thoughtful consideration to how they might be addressed.⁹⁹

The court ruled that the FDIC had violated section 501 of the Rehabilitation Act,¹⁰⁰ which imposes...