Dive Brief:
- Pilot Air Freight will pay $400,000 to settle a lawsuit filed by the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission that alleged the company fired a manager who had cancer because of his disability in violation of the Americans with Disabilities Act, EEOC announced Aug. 13.
- EEOC filed suit against Pilot in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Georgia in 2021. It claimed that Pilot eliminated the plaintiff’s job about 10 days after he took medical leave. Per the suit, Pilot claimed this was done because of a nationwide restructuring and because of the plaintiff’s short tenure. However, EEOC alleged that several employees hired after the plaintiff were not terminated, and the company posted a job description identical to the former worker’s roughly six months after the worker’s termination.
- Pilot will enter a one-year consent decree as part of the settlement, and the terms of the settlement include a stipulation that the company will provide a one-time mandatory live training program to HR employees on reasonable accommodations for disabilities. Pilot denied the allegations, according to court documents.
Dive Insight:
Past research has shown employees with cancer may struggle with workplace bias, even when their cancer is in remission. One 2017 study published in the Journal of Oncology Practice found that discrimination allegations made by those with a history of cancer had persisted or increased even after passage of the 2008 ADA Amendments Act. The law expanded ADA protections to employees with chronic conditions, including those whose cancer is in remission.
Similarly, a 2023 Harris Poll survey commissioned by Cancer and Careers, an organization tied to the nonprofit Cosmetic Executive Women, found that more than one-third of U.S. adults diagnosed with cancer said that those with cancer faced discrimination in the workplace. However, the same survey found that 74% felt confident about their job security after disclosing their diagnosis at work, and 73% said they felt their employers had their best interests in mind.
“Employees with disabilities should be supported — not cast aside,” Marcus Keegan, regional attorney for EEOC, said in the agency’s press release. “We are glad Pilot has agreed to training its employees and we are hopeful that no other Pilot employees will go through the discrimination [the plaintiff] faced.”
In April, the agency reached a $325,000 settlement with a car dealership it alleged had fired a sales executive to avoid paying for the executive’s cancer treatments. EEOC also settled with a real estate group in 2018 after a lawsuit alleged that the organization fired an employee following her breast cancer diagnosis.