Human Resource Blog

Conneticut Sick Leave and the ADA

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We have an employee that is consistently out “sick” from our Connecticut office. Her manager has come to me to find out if we can change our policy so that if an employee is out sick, he or she must submit a doctor’s notice or proof of the illness. I’ve heard this isn’t legal. Can you clarify?

It is not legal for you to investigate the health-related conditions of your employees. However, you can find ways to find out if an employee truly has a health-related issue that may require that employee to leave work or to take added time away from work. In so doing, you will have to follow a set of federal guidelines that are in place to protect the privacy of your employees. According to the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA), employers are not legally allowed to inquire about whether or not an employee has a disability. Constant illness would, most likely, qualify as a disability since it keeps your employee from actually working. However, the employer is legally allowed to inquire if the query is specifically job related.

If you would like to look further into an absent employee’s history and health, then you are within your right to if you have a business necessity. As such, you must have reason to believe that your employee cannot or is simply unable to perform the job related functions do to the illness or proposed disability. You can also prove that the employee’s job related functions would pose a specific health threat to your employee. However, you must be able to prove somehow that the threat of suspicion is more dangerous or serious than your employee’s absence.

However, as an employer, you can request a doctor’s note if your employee tells you that she is constantly sick or needs to visit the doctor. However, you are not allowed to ask your employee why she is out sick or visiting the doctor. As such, employers are not allowed to ask for a diagnosis and you cannot ask openly whether the condition prevents the employee from working.

When you ask one employee for written notification from a doctor, it needs to become company policy that you ask all employees for a doctor’s note. You cannot discriminate against one employee over another, even if it is just one employee that is constantly absent.