Mediating Disability Employment Discrimination Claims - Chapter 17 - AAA Handbook on Employment Arbitration and ADR - Third Edition

Author(s):

Matthew W. Daus

Jason R. Mischel

Page Count:

10 pages

Media Description:

1 PDF Download

Published:

December, 2015

Author Detail:

Matthew W. Daus is a Partner at Windels Marx Lane & Mittendorf, LLP, and a member of its Employment Law practice. He previously served as Commissioner and Chairman of the New York City Taxi and Limousine Commission ("TLC") for eight and one half years, appointed by Mayors Giuliani, Bloomberg and the New York City Council. Prior to his tenure as the TLC's longest serving Chief Executive Officer, Mr. Daus served as General Counsel to the Commission and Deputy Commissioner for Legal Affairs since 1998, and before that, as Special Counsel to the TLC Chair, supervising over 75 lawyers and Administrative Law Judges. Mr. Daus received a Master of Laws in Employment Law from the New York University School of Law.

Jason R. Mischel is Counsel to Windels Marx Lane & Mittendorf, LLP, and a member of its Employment Law practice. He previously served as Commissioner and General Counsel of the New York City Mayor's Office for People With Disabilities, serving as an Advisor to Mayor Michael Bloomberg on all disability-related issues for nearly a decade.

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Originally from:

AAA Handbook on Employment Arbitration and ADR - Third Edition

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I. Introduction

The enactment of such laws as the 1991 Civil Rights Amendments to Title VII, the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA), and, most recently, Title II of the Genetic Information Nondiscrimination Act in 2008,3 has expanded the scope of the United States’ civil rights laws. Though the passage of a law such as the ADA provides necessary protection to those who have been unfairly discriminated against, the result has been a tremendous influx of discrimination claims, whether litigated in the courts, local administrative agency and civil rights tribunals or the US Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC). The inability of these overburdened venues to deal with the continuing increase in the filing of disability discrimination claims is a situation that necessitates a different path.

In 2008, Congress passed the ADA Amendments Act of 2008 (ADAAA), which specifically overruled a string of US Supreme Court decisions that had the effect of narrowing the broad scope of protections the ADA had intended to provide. As a result, since the passing of the ADAAA, the total number of ADA-related employment actions initiated in Federal District Courts increased each year from 2008 through 2013, with only a slight dropoff in 2014. Mirroring this trend, the amount of ADA-related claims has steadily increased from fiscal year 2010 through 2014. In order to curtail the impact of this increase in ADA claims upon governmental institutions, the use of alternative dispute resolution (ADR) should be intensified. One of the most successful and costeffective methods of ADR is mediation, which has been defined as a “voluntary, multi-faceted and confidential process in which a mutuallyselected, impartial mediator helps people involved in controversies to reach an outcome of their own making, which may include the resolution of issues and the preservation of vital relationships.”