The New Year is off to a rickety start for employers after the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) sent out letters stating that requiring a high school diploma might violate key tenets of the Americans with Disabilities Act.
Employers are facing more uncertainty in the wake of a letter from the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission warning them that requiring a high school diploma from a job applicant might violate the Americans with Disabilities Act.
The development also has some wondering whether the agency’s advice will result in an educational backlash by creating less of an incentive for some high school students to graduate.
The “informal discussion letter” from the EEOC said an employer’s requirement of a high school diploma, long a standard criterion for screening potential employees, must be “job-related for the position in question and consistent with business necessity.” The letter was posted on the commission’s website on Dec. 2.
Employers could run afoul of the ADA if their requirement of a high school diploma “‘screens out an individual who is unable to graduate because of a learning disability that meets the ADA’s definition of ‘disability,’” the EEOC explained.
It’s more of a suggestion than a regulation; nevertheless, many employers are sounding the alarm, claiming an overreaching government is undermining jobs creation. Though the movement is designed to address the protection of disabled Americans, critics say it unjustly puts employers’ feet to the flames at a time of extended turmoil in the jobs market.
Job creators have been a hot topic for Republicans going into an election year, and this is being positioned as another example of Washington oversight run amok and its devastating effects on hiring.
The letter attempts to bring attention to potential workers who did not graduate high school because of a learning disability. If that person is still capable of doing the required work without having a high school diploma and can prove it to the employer, they should be on level playing field, especially at a time when unemployment among job seekers with and without diplomas is inching toward double-digit equilibrium. On the other hand, coming to the aid of those who did not get a diploma at the expense of employers will likely induce a hiring freeze, slowing our already torpid economy. One columnist regards it as the gristly strangulation of business by federal red tape:
The November seasonally-adjusted unemployment rate for people without high-school diplomas was 13.2 percent, and 8.8 percent for those with diplomas. There are ample numbers at the low end of the education spectrum looking for work, but this new EEOC thinking will make life even harder for them as businesses weigh whether considering new hires is worth the risk. Legal fees to meet such arcane compliance requirements takes funds that otherwise could be invested in job creation.
Disability law in America was borne out of the Civil Rights Movement and is often tied directly to it. The spirit behind the EEOC’s letter is the same that made wheelchair accessible entries mandatory for public buildings and disabled vehicles a required availability rather than an option. Few would argue that regulations protecting disabled Americans are a bad thing; however, circumstance and timing are working against it.
Again, this is not policy and no one is expecting it to be, but it is an interesting insight into Washington’s ideas about working through the jobs crisis with disabled Americans.
