Last month California signed in a bill, which should be effective 1/1/2020, that requires “all court staff who interact with the public” to complete implicit bias training “every 2 years.”  What a great law!  Maybe Oregon will follow?

The drafters defined implicit bias as shown below and it included bias based on mental or physical disabilities, medical condition or genetic information.  The requirement for repeat implicit bias training for all court staff dealing with the public was impressive and laudable.

The bill language stated:

Read more here:

https://www.disabilityrightsca.org/legislation/2019-legislation-affecting-persons-with-disabilities

AB 242 (Kamlager-Dove) – Courts: Attorneys: Implicit Bias: Training

Authorizes the Judicial Council to develop training on implicit bias with respect to certain characteristics. Requires all court staff who interact with the public to complete 2 hours of any training developed by the Judicial Council pursuant to this authorization every 2 years. (DRC had a support position)

Signed 10/02/2019. Eff. 01/01/2020. Chapter No. 2019-418

A recent Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals decision, unpublished, Smith v. Reliance Standard Life Insurance Company, No. 18-2225, __F.App’x__, 2019 WL 2539289 (4th Cir. June 20, 2019), noted the importance of considering, in a dispute over long-term disability benefits, whether return to work would increase stress and thereby worsen chronic medical conditions.

The court affirmed the grant of summary judgment to Plaintiff.  Plaintiff had a triple bypass surgery, diabetes, nerve damage, narrowed and hardened arteries, multiple strokes, and multiple stents.  The SSA and all his doctors concluded that he could not work.  The insurer, Reliance, relied on stray and typographical errors in his medical records.  It also over-emphasized minor improvements in Plaintiff’s health picture. The court noted “Doctors, like everyone else, make statements relative to a baseline, and Smith perhaps was better or ‘doing well’ for someone with many serious underlying health problems.” Focusing on one small upswing was found to be unreasonable unless the recovery was sufficiently substantial.

The court concluded Plaintiff could not return to work because the stress of working would risk undoing the progress that he made.  The court stated:  “Reliance came close to asserting that Smith needed to prove that he could not perform sedentary work due to a physical limitation on, for example, sitting, typing, or speaking. This is quite a high standard. Such a rule would erase disability eligibility for all but the bedridden. Some serious diseases are debilitating because of their effect on the mind or because they worsen with stress. This is a place for medical judgment, not per se rules: ‘The rule is one of reason.’” (quoting Harrison v. Wells Fargo Bank, N.A., 773 F.3d 15, 22 (4th Cir. 2014)).

In Robles v. Domino’s Pizza, the Ninth Circuit held that Title III of the Americans with Disabilities Act applies to both websites and mobile applications. This decision reversed the district court’s dismissal of a class action lawsuit which asserted that Domino’s Pizza violated the ADA and California’s Unruh Civil Rights Act (UCRA) by failing to make its website and mobile app accessible to individuals who are blind or visually impaired.

Even though customers primarily accessed the website and app away from Domino’s physical restaurants, the panel stated that the ADA applies to the services of a public accommodation, not services in a place of public accommodation. The panel stated that the website and app connected customers to the goods and services of Domino’s physical restaurants.

The Robles decision did not rule on whether Domino’s website and mobile app comply with the ADA.  The court concluded “We leave it to the district court, after discovery, to decide in the first instance whether Domino’s website and app provide the blind with effective communication and full and equal enjoyment of its products and services as the ADA mandates.”

http://cdn.ca9.uscourts.gov/datastore/opinions/2019/01/15/17-55504.pdf