Employers must re-assign a qualified employee with a disability under the Americans With Disabilities Act to a vacant job for which the employee is qualified, even if there are other better qualified applicants for that vacant job, according to a decision issued last month by the federal appeals court in Chicago.
In EEOC v. United Airlines Inc., the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals overruled prior precedent of allowing “best-qualified” selection policies in the context of transferring disabled employees to vacant positions, and instead imposed the equivalent of a “mandatory preference” rule.
