BILL ANALYSIS Ó AB 987 Page 1 Date of Hearing: April 22, 2015 ASSEMBLY COMMITTEE ON APPROPRIATIONS Jimmy Gomez, Chair AB 987 (Levine) - As Introduced February 26, 2015 ----------------------------------------------------------------- |Policy |Labor and Employment |Vote:|6 - 0 | |Committee: | | | | | | | | | | | | | | |-------------+-------------------------------+-----+-------------| | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | |-------------+-------------------------------+-----+-------------| | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | ----------------------------------------------------------------- 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 Page 2 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 Page 3 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