Piedmont Cheerwine Bottling Company, the North Carolina soft-drink maker, will pay $36,000 to settle an EEOC disability discrimination suit after a former employee with multiple sclerosis was fired following a workplace agility test the agency says she never should have had to take. The EEOC’s complaint said the employee’s MS medication had damaged the cartilage in her hip, causing a limp; even though she met the job’s physical requirements, Cheerwine required her to pass an agility test that included impermissible questions about her health, then placed her on unpaid leave and ultimately terminated her after rejecting her doctor’s clearance to return to work.
“Federal law prohibits employers from subjecting employees with a disability to different terms and conditions of employment than those enjoyed by employees who do not have a disability,” said Melinda C. Dugas, regional attorney for the EEOC’s Charlotte District. “Further, employers should take care to ensure that any testing that occurs in the workplace complies with the law.” The two-year consent decree resolving the suit requires Cheerwine to adopt written anti-discrimination policies, retrain managers and HR staff, and report to the agency.
The case lands on a compliance question HR technology has not solved: physical or cognitive assessment tools built to screen for job fitness routinely trip ADA wires when they are used to screen for a known disability instead of a documented performance concern. Courts have generally given employers latitude on fitness-for-duty calls, but Cheerwine shows the EEOC drawing a bright line once a test is triggered by disability status rather than job performance. As OFCCP scales back federal disability-hiring oversight, EEOC enforcement of individual ADA claims like this one is where the real compliance risk is landing.
