Whole Foods Market to Pay $65,000 To Settle EEOC Disability Suit

~~“Whole Foods Market Group, Inc.,  doing business as Whole Foods Market, headquartered in Austin, Texas, will pay  $65,000 and provide other relief to settle a disability discrimination lawsuit  brought by the U.S. Equal Employment  Opportunity Commission (EEOC), the federal agency announced today.  The EEOC had charged that Whole Foods Market  violated federal law by failing to accommodate and firing an employee because  of her disability.   

According  to the EEOC's lawsuit, Whole Foods hired Diane Butler in 2005 as a cashier for  a facility in Raleigh, N.C. Butler has polycystic kidney disease, a genetic  disease causing uncontrolled growth of cysts in the kidney, eventually leading  to kidney failure. In 2009, while working for Whole Foods, Butler had a kidney  transplant. The EEOC said that in December 2015, Butler missed work on two  occasions because she had been hospitalized and needed to visit the doctor  because of her kidney. The EEOC further alleged that although Butler informed  Whole Foods that she needed time off due to her kidney impairment, the company  nonetheless fired Butler because of her absences.

Such  alleged conduct violates the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA), which  protects employees from discrimination based on a disability and requires  employers to provide employees with disabilities with reasonable accommodations  unless it would be an undue hardship.”