BILL ANALYSIS Ó
AB 987
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Date of Hearing: April 22, 2015
ASSEMBLY COMMITTEE ON APPROPRIATIONS
Jimmy Gomez, Chair
AB
987 (Levine) - As Introduced February 26, 2015
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Urgency: No State Mandated Local Program: NoReimbursable: No
SUMMARY: This bill revises provisions of the Fair Employment and
Housing Act (FEHA) to make it an unlawful for an employer or
other covered entity to retaliate or otherwise discriminate
against a person for requesting an accommodation for physical or
mental disability or religious belief or observance, regardless
of whether the request was granted.
AB 987
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FISCAL EFFECT: Minor/absorbable costs to the Department of Fair
Employment and Housing (DFEH) to investigate claims based solely
on retaliation. According to DFEH, this bill likely would
result in very few new cases that would not have otherwise been
accepted and investigated by DFEH.
COMMENTS:
1)Purpose. Federal and state laws make it illegal to
discriminate against a job applicant or an employee because of
the person's race, color, religion, sex (including pregnancy),
national origin, age, disability or genetic information. The
Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) and the FEHA
explicitly prohibit retaliation by an employer because an
individual engaged in protected activity. This bill,
sponsored by the California Employment Lawyers Association
(CELA), clarifies an employee cannot be retaliated against for
requesting a reasonable accommodation for a disability or
religion.
2)Background. In October of 2013, the appellate court in Rope v.
Auto-Chlor held that an employee's request for a reasonable
accommodation is not protected from employer retaliation.
The plaintiff in the case informed his employer at the time of
hiring (September 2010) that he planned to donate a kidney to
his disabled sister in February 2011. On January 1, 2011, the
Michelle Maykin Memorial Donation Protection Act went into
effect, which provides employees paid, job-protected leave for
organ and bone-marrow donation. However, two days before the
law went into effect, the plaintiff was terminated by the
employer.
AB 987
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The plaintiff filed suit and the Court held that he had
pleaded sufficient facts to support a claim for
associational-based disability discrimination, however, the
Court dismissed a number of his other claims, including
retaliation under FEHA. Specifically, the court found "no
support in the regulations or case law for the proposition
that a mere request - or even repeated requests- for an
accommodation, without more, constitutes a protected activity
sufficient to support a claim for retaliation in violation of
FEHA."
According to the sponsor, without clarification of FEHA, an
employer can terminate an employee who requests a reasonable
accommodation, and the employee will have no legal recourse to
claim retaliation.
Analysis Prepared by:Misty Feusahrens / APPR. / (916)
319-2081