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EEOC Issues Q&A on Cancer in the Workplace

By Sarah A. Kelly
January 03, 2006

Earlier this year, the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) issued a set of questions and answers about cancer in the workplace and the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA). The EEOC addressed five major areas on whether and when cancer is a disability under the ADA:

  1. Questions that may and may not be asked of job applicants who may have cancer;
  2. Questions that may and may not be asked of an employee who has cancer;
  3. An employer's obligation to keep medical information regarding an employee's cancer confidential;
  4. An employer's obligations to accommodate employees with cancer; and
  5. Whether and when an employee's cancer may be considered a “direct threat” which prevents an employee from performing his or her job.

The Q&A does not contain much in the way of new information, but rather gives examples that help illustrate the position the EEOC will take on issues regarding cancer as a disability. Since these are the types of issues that often puzzle human resources managers ' and land on the desk of in-house counsel ' the EEOC's Q&A serves to provide some assistance on how to handle these issues.

Cancer as a Disability

The EEOC rearticulates that cancer is a disability under the ADA when the cancer or its side effects substantially limit one or more of a person's major life activities. Thus, in one EEOC example, a woman with breast cancer who is ill and exhausted from treatment such that she cannot perform routine activities such as cooking, shopping, or household chores, has a disability because her cancer substantially limits her ability to care for herself. Likewise, an individual with advanced testicular cancer who has had chemotherapy rendering him sterile has a disability because he is substantially limited in the major life activity of reproduction.

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