The EEOC filed two lawsuits in Texas courts September 24, alleging that a pharmacy in Fabens and a coffeehouse in Ft. Worth both discriminated against employees with disabilities that rendered them vulnerable to serious illness if they contracted COVID-19. The two employers took different approaches to the virus, but both ran afoul of the ADA.
According to the EEOC’s suit against US Drug Mart d/b/a Fabens Pharmacy, the pharmacy discriminated against a pharmacy technician with asthma who asked to wear a facemask at work as an accommodation of his disability immediately following the COVID-19 outbreak to help protect him from the virus. The employee was harassed because he requested this accommodation and was sent home twice when he asked to wear a mask, and then taunted and humiliated for questioning management’s policy prohibiting masks, leading him to quit, according to the suit.
