March 16, 2023

Elon Musk’s Public Mocking of Employee’s Disability Highlights the Importance of Reasonable Accommodations and Health Information Privacy

Last week, Elon Musk publicly mocked a Twitter employee who was left to inquire publicly about whether he still had a job after receiving little clarity from Twitter HR. The employee, Haraldur “Halli” Thorleiffson of Iceland, tweeted that he hadn’t had access to his work computer in nine days but had not heard from HR about whether he had been terminated. In response, Musk began to question Halli about the work he was doing before publicly revealing Halli’s disability. Halli then shared that he has muscular dystrophy and uses a wheelchair. As a result of his disability, he struggles to type for extended periods of time without his hands starting to cramp.

Although Musk later apologized for the exchange and spoke to Halli directly, he drew criticism for crassly revealing an employee’s disability and use of reasonable accommodations. Musk’s public mocking dually highlights issues that disabled workers face—access to, and understanding of, reasonable accommodations and respect of medical confidentiality in the workplace. Reasonable accommodations—or adjustments made in the workplace to accommodate or assist disabled employees in successfully performing their job duties—are required under the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA), unless such accommodation would create undue hardship for the employer. In addition, the ADA requires employers to maintain the confidentiality of employee medical information and maintain personal medical information in a file separate from an employee’s personnel file. 

This exchange comes on the heels of mass layoffs at Twitter and a pending case in the Northern District of California. After requiring that all Twitter employees return to work in-person in November 2022, a handful of disabled Twitter employees filed a lawsuit challenging the edict and arguing that Musk violated ADA laws. Twitter employees who had accommodations to work remotely due to their disability were effectively terminated once Musk ordered all employees to return in person without exception. So far, no clear and consistent legal precedent about the reasonableness of remote work has been established by the courts.

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Employees in New York State Given Leave for Vaccination

April 1, 2021
Leave
All public and private employees in New York may use paid time off to receive Covid-19 vaccinations. According to the language of the bill, employees are eligible for up to four hours of excused leave for each injection they receive. This excused leave does not affect any other accrued leave an employee might have already.

Cuomo’s Textbook Violations of His Own Sexual Harassment Law

March 29, 2021
Sexual Harassment
Governor Cuomo, who boasted that “we are sending a strong message that time is up on sexual harassment in the workplace” doesn’t appear to have thought his own message applied to him. Read all about it in Senior Associate Alex Berke’s piece “Cuomo’s Textbook Violations of His Own Sexual Harassment Law” in the Daily Beast.

Berke-Weiss Law PLLC Releases Training Video Focused on Family and Medical Leave

March 22, 2021
Paid Family Leave
If you need to brush up on FMLA and other questions pertaining to leave, including how FMLA works with New York State Paid Family Leave, we have a new training video from an event with Park Slope Parents that provides answers to many issues about family and medical leave and what you need to know.

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