Emerging Issues In Workplace Accommodations

Employer obligations to provide accommodations now extend far beyond the area of disabilities, although that’s an area that remains under intense federal scrutiny. More recently there has been emphasis on religious accommodations, transgender facilities and private venues for lactating mothers. Jay M. Wallace from the Bell Nunnally & Martin law firm, in a Today’s General Counsel article, looks at some emerging issues in each of these areas. “The good news for employers,” he says, “is that religious accommodations follow the same traditional interactive-process track as disability accommodations.” In the area of transgender accommodations, bathroom facilities present a unique challenge to employers in that they must balance the privacy rights of some employees with the preference of transgender people to use a particular bathroom or locker room.