If your ADA accommodation policy starts with "take unpaid leave, " you're doing it wrong. Just ask the 15 Dunkin' Donuts franchisees that recently agreed to pay $250, 000 to settle an EEOC disability discrimination lawsuit. According to the EEOC, these ...
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Unpaid leave is an ADA reasonable accommodation; it just can't be the only one you offer

If your ADA accommodation policy starts with "take unpaid leave," you're doing it wrong.

Just ask the 15 Dunkin' Donuts franchisees that recently agreed to pay $250,000 to settle an EEOC disability discrimination lawsuit.

According to the EEOC, these franchisees maintained a policy that refused to provide reasonable accommodations to employees with medical restrictions. Instead, workers were placed on unpaid, indefinite leave until they could return to work with no restrictions whatsoever. In other words, if an employee wasn't "100% healed," they weren't working.

The EEOC calls this a "100%-healed" policy. The ADA calls it unlawful.

Too many employers mistakenly assume that if an employee has medical restrictions, the safest course is to send them home until they're fully recovered. That instinct is understandable. It's also exactly what the ADA is designed to prevent.

The ADA requires employers to engage in an interactive process with employees seeking accommodations and to conduct an individualized assessment of whether they can perform the essential functions of their jobs with a reasonable accommodation. Sometimes that assessment and interactive process results in modified duties. Sometimes it's a schedule change. Sometimes it's assistive equipment. And yes, sometimes it's a leave of absence.

Leave can absolutely be a reasonable accommodation under the ADA. It just can't be the only accommodation you're willing to consider.

An employee with lifting restrictions might still be able to perform the essential functions of a cashier position. An employee recovering from surgery might need a temporary schedule adjustment. An employee with a mobility impairment might need a workstation modification. Automatically placing these employees on unpaid leave skips the interactive process entirely and assumes that disability equals inability.

That's precisely what got these Dunkin' franchisees into trouble.

The EEOC also alleged that employees were effectively forced to resign or were terminated because they couldn't provide a doctor's note releasing them to work without restrictions. That's another hallmark of an unlawful 100%-healed policy. The ADA doesn't require employees to be restriction-free. It requires employers to determine whether employees can perform their jobs with reasonable accommodation.

The agency's settlement announcement contains a quote every employer should tape to its ADA policy manual: "The ADA requires employers to individually assess reasonable accommodations and grant those which do not pose an undue hardship for the employer. Uniform policies eliminating such individual considerations are red flags for ADA violations."

That's the lesson every employer should take from this settlement.

If your handbook, leave policy, or accommodation practices contain language requiring employees to be fully recovered, have no restrictions, or be 100% healed before returning to work, fix it now. Likewise, if your managers routinely respond to medical restrictions by immediately placing employees on unpaid leave without exploring other options, you're creating the same risk that cost these franchisees a quarter-million dollars.

The ADA requires individualized assessments, not automatic decisions. If your default response to workplace restrictions is unpaid leave, you're not engaging in the interactive process. You're building the plaintiff's case for them.

The EEOC's new Enforcement Plan is way more politics than strategy

The EEOC has replaced its 2024-2028 Strategic Enforcement Plan with a new National Enforcement Plan for 2025-2029. The change is more than cosmetic. It reflects a significant shift in what the agency believes its mission should be.

To be clear, intentional discrimination against anyone because of race, sex, religion, national origin, age, disability, or any other protected characteristic is unlawful. Full stop. Title VII protects everyone. An employer cannot justify discrimination simply because it occurs in the name of diversity, equity, or inclusion.

But that's not really the story here.

The story is what the EEOC has chosen to prioritize.

The agency's stated Chair Priorities now include "remedying DEI-related race and sex discrimination," "protecting American workers from anti-American national origin discrimination," "defending women's rights to single-sex spaces at work and workers' rights to express the binary nature of sex," and protecting religious liberty and religious accommodations. The plan also repeatedly identifies DEI programs, hiring initiatives, and workplace diversity practices as enforcement targets.

None of these issues fall outside the EEOC's jurisdiction. If an employer intentionally discriminates based on race, sex, religion, or national origin, the agency should investigate. The question is whether elevating these issues to the agency's highest enforcement priorities reflects a neutral assessment of workplace discrimination or a political response to the culture-war issues dominating today's headlines.

The most revealing sentence in the entire document may be the one few employers will notice. The EEOC expressly states that it will use its enforcement authority "to advance the Administration's policy objectives."

That's an astonishing admission. The EEOC was not created to advance presidential policy objectives. It was created to enforce federal anti-discrimination laws. Those are not always the same thing.

Every administration leaves its fingerprints on federal agencies. That's politics. But this plan reads less like a neutral enforcement roadmap and more like a political document designed to reassure the White House that the agency is aligned with its culture-war priorities.

For most of its history, the EEOC has focused its resources on combating discrimination that has historically excluded and marginalized workers from equal employment opportunity. This plan does not abandon that mission outright. But it unmistakably shifts the agency's attention toward issues that have become central to the current Administration's political agenda.

An EEOC focused on rooting out discrimination wherever it exists is fulfilling its statutory mission. An EEOC focused on advancing the political objectives of its boss is something very different.

What should employers do? Don't overreact, but don't ignore the signal. Review DEI initiatives for legal compliance. Ensure accommodation processes work effectively for both disability and religious requests. Revisit policies addressing sex-segregated facilities, pronoun usage, and employee expression. Most importantly, continue making employment decisions based on qualifications, performance, and business needs—not politics.

Administrations change. Enforcement priorities change. The law changes more slowly. Smart employers should keep their focus there.

WIRTW #800: the 'world cup' edition

The World Cup kicks off on June 11, and plenty of matches will be played during the workday. (June 17, I'm looking at you. Portugal vs. DR Congo starts at 1 p.m. ET, followed by England vs. Croatia just three hours later.)

So what's an employer of football-loving employees to do?

Nick Mohammed, of Ted Lasso fame, has a suggestion. He's released a tongue-in-cheek video called Fight for Your Right to Watch the 2026 FIFA World Cup at Work.

 

I'm not suggesting employees spend the next six weeks with one eye on their work and the other on a World Cup stream.

Then again, I'm not exactly suggesting they don't, at least for games that matter to them.

Instead of treating the World Cup as six weeks of lost productivity, smart employers might view it as six weeks of culture-building. A lunchtime watch party. A company bracket. National team jerseys on match days.

If employees are going to be paying attention anyway, you might as well harness the enthusiasm rather than police it. Productivity might dip for 90 minutes, but morale and goodwill can last a lot longer.


Here's what I read this week that you should read, too. 

Is Beer at Work a Problem, or Is It a Sign of Something Bigger? — via Improve Your HR by Suzanne Lucas, the Evil HR Lady


How People Are Really Using AI in 2026 — via Harvard Business Review





Ohio's new ethics guide — Artificial Intelligence for Lawyers and Judicial Officers — leaves one big question unanswered

Ohio's new AI Ethics Guide for Lawyers is worth reading.

It tackles many of the questions lawyers have been asking since generative AI entered the mainstream: competence, confidentiality, client communications, billing, hallucinated citations, supervision, and judicial use of AI.

First, credit where it's due. Ohio deserves praise for stepping into a conversation that many jurisdictions have been reluctant to have. Lawyers are hungry for practical guidance on AI, and doing nothing is no longer an option. The Ohio Board of Professional Conduct deserves recognition for taking a serious run at a rapidly evolving issue.

Which is why one part of the Guide surprised me. On the question of whether lawyers can ethically disclose client information to AI platforms, the guidance seems to say both yes and no.

On one hand, the Guide acknowledges that lawyers may use AI tools in client representations and contemplates circumstances in which client-related information may be entered into an AI system. It advises lawyers to use AI products with adequate security measures and confidentiality safeguards.

"[O]nly AI tools offered with adequate security measures and other confidentiality safeguards should be used when client-related information is disclosed (or information possibly leading to the identity of a client)."

But then it says this: 

"Regardless of the AI tool utilized, lawyers should always anonymize client information and refrain from inputting details that could lead to the discovery of the client's identity."

If that's the rule, then what exactly are we talking about when we discuss secure enterprise AI platforms?

Because if lawyers must always anonymize client information and avoid information that could reveal a client's identity, then the security measures, confidentiality protections, and contractual safeguards of a particular AI product become largely irrelevant. Under that reading, the answer is simple: never disclose client information to any AI platform, no matter how secure.

Yet the Guide spends considerable time discussing the use of AI tools that expressly do not store, train on, or share user data.

That discussion only makes sense if disclosure of client information is sometimes permissible when adequate safeguards exist.

Those are two very different standards.

One says: Only use secure AI tools when disclosing client information.

The other says: Never disclose identifiable client information at all.

For firms trying to develop AI governance policies, that distinction matters.

Lawyers have been sharing confidential client information with third-party vendors for decades—email providers, cloud storage companies, document management systems, e-discovery vendors, and legal research platforms. The ethical question shouldn't be whether AI is different. The question should be what safeguards are sufficient to permit its use.

A helpful tip on the FLSA's tip credit

For many craft breweries, the taproom is where the magic happens. It's where customers connect with your brand, your beer, and your people. 

It's also where wage-and-hour lawsuits often begin. 

Artisanal Brewing Ventures, the company behind Southern Tier, Victory, and other craft beer brands, is facing a nationwide collective action over its pay practices at 15 taprooms across five states. At the heart of the lawsuit is an issue that too many hospitality employers overlook: compliance with the Fair Labor Standards Act's tip-credit rules. 

The allegations should sound familiar to brewery owners. Servers and bartenders allegedly were paid the tipped minimum wage while performing opening and closing duties, cleaning, stocking inventory, moving kegs, taking out trash, and other side work. The lawsuit also claims employees worked off the clock and that the company failed to satisfy the notice requirements necessary to claim a tip credit. Those allegations were enough for a federal judge to conditionally certify a nationwide collective action and authorize notice to be sent to tipped employees throughout the company's operations. 

Whether those allegations prove true remains to be seen. What matters is how easily tip-credit issues can turn into expensive litigation. 

Many employers mistakenly believe that paying a tipped employee a cash wage and allowing them to keep tips is enough. It isn't. 

The FLSA imposes specific requirements before an employer can claim a tip credit. Employees must receive required notice. Tip pools must be structured correctly. Employers must ensure tipped employees are performing tip-producing work when paid at the tipped rate. Certain non-tipped duties can create liability if not handled properly. And every minute worked must be recorded and paid. 

Get those rules wrong and the consequences can be severe. 

The risk isn't limited to one employee claiming a few dollars in unpaid wages. A defective tip-credit practice often affects every server and bartender in every location. That's why plaintiffs' lawyers target these cases. One alleged policy can become a collective action spanning multiple locations and hundreds of employees. Here, the court found sufficient evidence of an alleged common policy to allow notice to be sent to similarly situated tipped employees nationwide. 

For craft breweries, the lesson is simple. 

Don't assume your tip-credit practices are compliant because they've always been done that way. Review your onboarding documents, side-work requirements, tip-pooling procedures, and timekeeping practices. Make sure managers understand when tipped employees must be paid the full minimum wage and ensure no one is working before clocking in or after clocking out. 

The taproom may be the heart of your brewery. It's also one of your biggest wage-and-hour risks. A proactive audit today costs far less than defending a collective action tomorrow.

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