How Much Do You Need to Tell Your Employer About Your Disability?

If you have a disability under the Americans With Disabilities Act (ADA), and you need accommodations for your disability in the workplace, you may have a problem, or at least, a dilemma.

On the one hand, you certainly need to tell your employer about your disability, and the nature of your limitations, so your employer knows what accommodations you need, and why. On the other hand, your medical information is private, and an employee may, understandably, be hesitant to tell an employer about all the private medical details of the employee’s disability.

Worse, many employers know this and exploit it—they often will ask a disabled employee lots of probing, intrusive, and detailed questions about the employee’s medical history. When the employee is vague or refuses to give more details, the employer uses this as an excuse to legally deny the employee his or her accommodations.

What Can an Employer Ask For?

An employer can ask and is entitled to know about what the nature of your disability is, or what disabilities you have (again, this is all assuming you are asking for an accommodation at work). The employer can also ask questions about how severe your limitations are because they are entitled to know how your disability effects your ability to do the primary functions of your job.

An employer can ask about your ability to perform the tasks needed for your job. Note that the employer can only ask about abilities or limitations related to the job or job duties—not about an employee’s general limitations or disabilities, to the extent they may be outside of, or unrelated to, work functions.

Employers also cannot ask you to take any kind of exam, physical or mental, to “verify” your disability (unless any such test is given to all employees as a matter of company policy, regardless of disability).  However, they may ask you to complete a fitness for duty test but this must be administered by a professional and according to your company’s written policies and procedures.

You do have the right to refuse to answer questions that are intrusive, invasive, or which go beyond the job or accommodations for the job. It is illegal for an employer to retaliate against you because you refuse to answer a question that you legally don’t have to answer.

What About Medical Documentation?

Employers can ask for medical documentation, but they do not need to in order to provide you with accommodations. In some cases, if a limitation or disability is obvious in the absence of medical documentation, an employer may not condition the accommodation on medical records.

Employers also cannot ask for blanket medical authorizations, or for permission to speak with your doctors, or to get more information than what is necessary, to document the disability.

Additionally, documentation of your disability, if it is provided, may come from any source—it doesn’t have to be from a doctor. Nurses, therapists, and others, who are treating or who have treated you for your condition, are able to provide your employer information related to your disability.

So long as the disability documentation comes from an actual medical source that treats you, the employer cannot “disagree” with your employer, or the nature or extent of your disability.

In general, its always preferable to submit a medical note stating what your physical limitations are and what accommodations would make it such that you can do your job; assuming they are not too burdensome, the employer must comply.

Are you being denied accommodations at work? Contact the San Jose employment attorneys at the Costanzo Law Firm for help.

Sources:

askjan.org/articles/Requests-For-Medical-Documentation-and-the-ADA.cfm#:~:text=A%3A%20According%20to%20the%20EEOC%2C%20in%20most%20situations%20under%20the,disability%20and%20need%20for%20accommodation.

privacyrights.org/consumer-guides/employment-and-your-medical-privacy-california-medical-privacy-series