Twitter Inc owner Elon Musk’s mandate that employees stop working remotely and work “extended, high-intensity hours” discriminates against workers with disabilities, a new lawsuit alleges.
Dmitry Borodaenko, a California-based engineering manager who said Twitter fired him this week when he refused to report to the office, filed a class action lawsuit against the company in San Francisco federal court on Wednesday.
Borodaenko said Musk’s recent call for Twitter workers to return to the office or leave violates the federal Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA), which requires employers to provide reasonable accommodations to workers with disabilities. .
Borodaenko has a disability that makes him vulnerable to COVID-19, according to the complaint.
The lawsuit says many Twitter employees with disabilities have been forced to resign because they cannot meet Musk’s required performance and productivity standards.
In a separate complaint filed in the same court on Wednesday, Twitter was accused of laying off thousands of contract workers without giving the 60-day notice required by federal law.
Twitter is already facing a proposed class action, also in San Francisco federal court, alleging it violated that law by suddenly laying off about 3,700 employees, or half the company’s workforce, after Musk took over.
Twitter did not immediately respond to a request for comment Thursday. Musk has said that the fired workers were offered three months of severance pay.
Under federal law, employers can provide workers with 60 days of severance pay in lieu of notice.
Shannon Liss-Riordan, an attorney for the plaintiffs in all three pending cases, said that since taking over Twitter, Musk has “put the company’s workers through a great deal of pain and uncertainty in such a short amount of time.”
There is little legal precedent as to when telecommuting qualifies as a reasonable accommodation under the ADA, and the question ultimately turns on the facts of individual cases. Because of this, disability bias claims can be difficult to raise in a class action.
The US Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, which enforces the ADA, said in guidance issued in 2020 that telecommuting can be a reasonable accommodation when it would not create an undue burden on an employer.
