ST. LOUIS, MO (Law.com) — The full U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit will hear a case this week that could weaken a key defense that employers turn to in disability discrimination lawsuits and make it easier for plaintiffs’ claims to proceed, legal experts said.
The 11-member court will revisit a divided panel decision from July, which allowed a lawsuit from former Hardee’s store manager Tonya Huber alleging violations of the Americans with Disabilities Act to go forward.
Hardee’s is urging the St. Louis-based Eighth Circuit to reject what the company called a new test created by the panel that permits ADA claims to go to a jury if the firing of a disabled employee for having violated workplace policy is “inextricably linked” to the worker’s disability.
Hardee’s says this “intertwinement test,” a term coined by the dissenting panel judge, runs against the “honest belief” defense, in which an employer is protected from discrimination claims if it terminates someone based on its true belief that that person violated a workplace policy or engaged in misconduct.
“The panel says the good-faith defense is not unlimited,” said Jared Cook, senior counsel at Tully Rinckey who was not involved in the case. “You can’t say, ‘Well, we thought that [the employee was] actually guilty of something,’ and then use it as essentially a ‘get-out-of-jail-free card.’ You have to actually have some legitimate basis for it.”
