Clarksville Health System, G.P. d/b/a Tennova Healthcare — Clarksville (Tennova), operating a hospital in Clarksville, Tenn., violated federal civil rights laws when it denied a registered nurse a reasonable accommodation for her disability and fired her, the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) charged in a lawsuit. According to the lawsuit, the nurse suffered an on-the-job injury to her knee. After surgery and recovery, her doctor placed her on permanent restrictions of intermittent sedentary activity for a third of the day. Tennova refused to allow the employee to continue working as a nurse. Instead, Tennova gave her ten days to find another job at its hospital before it fired her. Despite having vacant jobs in the workplace for which the nurse qualified, Tennova failed to reassign the nurse to the positions as a reasonable accommodation. Rather, Tennova required the nurse to apply and interview for the positions and declined to hire her. After Tennova fired the nurse, Tennova offered her a registrar job that paid one third of what the nursing position paid. Such alleged conduct violates the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA), which makes it unlawful to discriminate against employees by denying them a reasonable accommodation and terminating them because of a disability.
