Susan K. Lessack Quoted in Society for Human Resource Management Article, 'When Your Worker Is SAD'
Pepper Hamilton partner Susan K. Lessack was quoted in the January 21, 2016 Society for Human Resource Management article, "When Your Worker Is SAD."
"Because SAD is not a disability that's readily apparent, an employer may ask a worker for a doctor's documentation that the employee has SAD and, as a result, needs a reasonable accommodation under the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA)," said Susan K. Lessack, a labor and employment law attorney in the Philadelphia office of Pepper Hamilton LLP.
"The employer should talk to the worker—and may even ask the doctor—about accommodations that might be effective," Lessack said, noting that "an employer doesn't have to provide a suggested accommodation if another, less expensive accommodation would be just as effective."
"For example, an employee with SAD might request an office with a window to provide exposure to light," she said. "An employer may offer instead to provide a light therapy device, viewing it as a less burdensome accommodation."
"An employee with SAD might also be deemed to have a serious health condition under the Family and Medical Leave Act (FMLA), triggering possible eligibility for up to 12 weeks of leave for treatment and doctors' appointments. That leave can be continuous or intermittent, depending on the opinion of the employee's doctor," Lessack said. "At the end of the leave, the employee is entitled to be reinstated to the same position or an equivalent one."
"It's often the case," she said, "that an employee has both a disability under the ADA and a serious health condition under the FMLA." In that case, if the employee's doctor concludes that the worker needs a leave of longer than 12 weeks, "the employer will likely have to extend the leave for some period of time unless the extension would pose an undue hardship," she said.
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