The American constitution advocates for the equality of all people in the United States. The law in the US protects all the vulnerable and minority groups who live within the American territories. Specifically, religious minority groups and the disabled are among the protected individuals in the American law. The legislative and judiciary arms of government have been in a push to ensure that the rights of the aforementioned groups are protected legally. In this context, this paper will analyze the way the American law recommends employers’ treatment of individuals with disabilities and those from different religions. Significantly, this paper will detail the legislations that control the way employers and other agencies treat persons with disabilities and religious minorities.
The Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA), whose definitions were extended in the ADA Amendments Act, defines the way people with disabilities should be treated in the United States. The ADA recommends that disabled people should never be discriminated on the basis of their physical or mental impairment (Bradbury & Jacobson, 2013). The ADA was adopted in 1990 and it covers all employers who have more than 15 employees and all local and state governments regardless of the number of people they may have employed. The Act prohibits all forms of discrimination directed at disabled employees or job applicants. It recommends that employers should initiate measures that will accommodate all disabled employees and job seekers unless doing so would cause undue hardship. The standard of explaining hardship in the context of providing accommodation to disabled people has always been so high that most employees have found it difficult meeting all their obligations (Grover, 2015). Besides, employees and job seekers should meet the minimum definitions of physical and mental impairment to be protected by the ADA and ADA Amendments Act.
The Civil Rights Act of 1964, in its seventh Title, prohibits the discrimination, harassment and retaliation of people on the basis of the religion. The US legal system offers a comprehensive definition of religious beliefs, which extend beyond the definition of traditional beliefs. The act recommends that employers provide religious accommodation to all their employers and job seekers unless doing so will cause undue hardship (Hagen, 2010). Just like with the ADA and ADA Amendments Act, the Civil Rights Act of 1964 also provides an extensive definition of undue hardship, which maximizes the ability to ensure that all employees, both public and private meet the requirement of respecting the human rights of people from different religious beliefs. Consistent Supreme Court decisions have always upheld that religious accommodation should be held with the same regard like the rest of the other human rights that the American laws uphold. The employers and individual citizens in the US have the responsibility of respecting the religious beliefs of their compatriots. But the legal structures in place in the United States have fully abolished all forms of discrimination and negative accommodation of people on the basis of their religious beliefs.
Undue hardship is a concept that is defined to ensure that employers maintain the highest standards expected in the interests of disabled persons and the individuals who hold different religious beliefs. The federal and state authorities are legally expected to enforce the statutes described in the ADA, ADA Amendments Act and the Civil Rights Act of 1964. Industry regulatory agencies are also expected to define the standards that employers ought to meet to ensure that all employees and job seekers are treated with the respect that they deserve and that their rights, beliefs and values are upheld as described in the American legal system. It is also imperative that the individual employers, both in the public and private sectors, respect the statutes prohibiting discrimination, harassment and retaliation among the disabled people and the individuals that hold different religious beliefs and opinions.
Through my research, I was able to read a case in which an employer was able to adjust the working conditions to accommodate the needs of the disabled and those with different religious opinions. In the first case, McDonalds, a leading fast food business in the US, recently developed a strategy to ensure that it hires disabled individuals and treats them as respectfully as it does the able individuals (McDonalds, 2015). In meeting the demands of their undertaking, McDonalds had to change some of its structures and work schedules to ensure that the disabled attained the comfort required to deliver on their assigned job duties. Besides, the disabled were allowed longer job leaves and they were assigned lighter duties to ensure that their work resonated well with their abilities. In yet another cases, I studied a case about Apple, a leading tech company in the United States, which developed policies to ensure that all its employees had their religious beliefs and values incorporated into the work structures of the duties that they were assigned (Apple Inc., 2016). The policies that Apple adopted were aimed at ensuring that all its employees worked comfortably without the undue hardship that could derail their productivity.
The United States, a country that prides itself as the most advanced democracy in the world, ought to ensure that all its systems respect and uphold the basic human rights and freedoms among its citizens. Although some recent cases have indicated racial and religious intolerance, it has been clear that the US is committed to ensuring that all its peoples are treated within the equality threshold. Additionally, the rights of the disabled have to be guaranteed to ensure that the tag of a civilized nation that the US has always enjoyed is maintained at its highest standards. Therefore, the US has to ensure that the established legal statutes are enforced in a way that fully deters any flouting by employers into the future.
References
Apple Inc. (2016). Inclusion & Diversity. Apple. Retrieved 14 August 2016, from http://www.apple.com/diversity/
Bradbury, M. & Jacobson, W. (2013). A New Era of Protection against Disability Discrimination? The ADA Amendments Act of 2008 and "Regarded As" Disabled. Review of Public Personnel Administration, 33(4), 320-339. http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/0734371x12472683
Grover, C. (2015). Employment and Support Allowance, the ‘summer budget’ and less eligible disabled people. Disability & Society, 30(10), 1573-1576. http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/09687599.2015.1091151
Hagen, W. (2010). Dissection and Analysis of the Recent Cases on Employment Discrimination under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. Employee Responsibilities and Rights Journal, 23(3), 171-186. http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s10672-010-9163-x
McDonalds. (2015). Privacy Policy - McDonald's Corporate website: AboutMcDonalds.com.Aboutmcdonalds.com. Retrieved 14 August 2016, from http://www.aboutmcdonalds.com/mcd/privacy_policy.html
