Los Angeles Disability Discrimination Lawyer

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Disability Rights Legal Center - Los Angeles Americans With Disabilities Act (ADA) Lawyers Weekly Department of Labor Disability & Discrimination

California Fair Employment and
Housing Act (FEHA)

Effective January 1, 2001, California's Fair Employment and Housing Act ("FEHA") was amended to provide significantly broader protections to employees with disabilities. The amendments include an express declaration that the California statutes are intended to extend beyond the federal ADA. Furthermore, the Act sets forth a broader definition of the term "disability," and established new and different unlawful employment practices arising from certain preemployment and post-employment inquiries. These include the failure to engage in a timely, good faith, and interactive process with the employee to determine a reasonable accommodation for the disability. The amendments are significant because they far exceed the protections afforded by the federal ADA.  California's FEHA now defines "disability" as a mental or physical condition that limits a major life activity — as compared to the ADA, which defines "disability" as a mental or physical impairment that substantially limits a major life activity. Under the amended FEHA, a mental or physical condition limits a major life activity if it makes the achievement of that life activity difficult. Moreover, major life activities are to be broadly construed to include physical, mental and social activities, and working. Additionally, under the amended FEHA, whether a condition limits a major life activity is to be determined without respect to any mitigating measures (unless the mitigating measure itself limits a major life activity). Once again, this provision differs from federal law under the ADA, where such mitigating measures are included in determining whether an individual has a disability. Thus, the California statutory scheme expressly has rejected the United States Supreme Court's decision in Sutton v. United Airlines, Inc., 119 U.S. 2139, 2156 (1999)("the effects of [mitigating] measures — both positive and negative — must be taken into account when judging whether that person is . . . "disabled" under the [ADA].")  Finally, under the amended FEHA, "working" is deemed to be a major life activity, regardless of whether the limitation implicates one particular job or a class or broad range of jobs. As such, California's FEHA again exceeds the protections afforded by the ADA (where the limitation must implicate a class or broad range of jobs).

Employers Covered by FEHA Disability Discrimination Provisions
Generally speaking, the disability discrimination provisions of FEHA apply to employers who regularly employ in California 5 or more employees for each working day in any 20 consecutive calendar weeks in the current or preceding calendar year. 

Sample California Superior Court Disability Discrimination Complaint

Selected Disability Discrimination Cases

Schifando v. City of Los Angeles (2003) 31 Cal.4th 1074, California Supreme Court. Review was granted in this case, to determine whether a city employee must exhaust both the administrative remedy that the California Fair Employment and Housing Act (Gov. Code, §12900 et seq.) FEHA provides, and the internal remedy that a city charter requires before filing an FEHA disability discrimination claim in superior court. 

Held: An employee need not exhaust both administrative remedies. Receiving a Department of Fair Employment and Housing "right to sue" letter is a sufficient prerequisite to filing an FEHA claim in superior court.