North Carolina Disability Discrimination Laws

Disability discrimination law: When applicants or employees request accommodation of a disability or medical condition that has been made known, employers must identify an effective reasonable accommodation, such as modification or adaptation of the work environment or job responsibilities that will enable applicants or employees to perform essential job functions. When interviewing applicants with disabilities, for example, employers might have to provide interpreters if applicants are hearing impaired or conduct interviews in rooms accessible to applicants using wheelchairs. When conducting employment tests, employers might have to offer tests in Braille to applicants or employees who are blind or allow their use of readers.

Employees with disabilities who seek reasonable accommodation must make their disability known, submit supporting medical documentation, suggest possible accommodations, and cooperate in determining feasible accommodations. Employers can refuse reasonable accommodation to employees who don’t fulfill these duties.

Employers aren’t required to:

• make any accommodation that would create undue hardship because (for example) the accommodation is unduly expensive or requires extensive physical or structural modifications to the workplace, or would fundamentally change business operations;
• hire one or more employees to enable the applicant or employee with a disability to be employed;
• reassign job duties to other employees without reassigning duties to the employee with a disability;
• deviate from seniority policies; or
• provide accommodations of a personal nature, such as wheelchairs, hearing aids, or prosthetics, unless they provide these items for employees who don’t have disabilities.

Even if a particular accommodation would result in undue hardship, however, employers still must provide any alternative accommodation that is available and wouldn’t create undue hardship.

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Under Title I of the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA), employers, including state and local governments, with 15 or more employees, are prohibited from discriminating against people with disabilities. Title I protects qualified individuals with disabilities in several areas, including job application procedures, hiring, firing, advancement, compensation and job training. It is also unlawful to retaliate against someone for opposing employment practices that discriminate based on disability, or for filing an ADA discrimination charge. The Office of Federal Contract Compliance Programs (OFCCP) shares enforcement authority for Title I of the ADA with the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC), which has primary responsibility for enforcing the employment provisions of the law. (Note: Federal employees and job applicants are covered by Section 501 of the Rehabilitation Act of 1973 instead of the ADA.