Ask FELTG
Have a question about federal employment law? Read below to find answers - or ask a question of your own.Ask FELTG: If Metro is Closed, Is Telework a Reasonable Accommodation?
We recently received the following question: If a Metro station is closed for construction, does our agency have to accommodate a disabled employee who usually takes the Metro to work by granting temporary telework? Thanks for the question. As in every reasonable...
Ask FELTG: Can Comments About Church Attendance State a Viable Claim of Hostile Work Environment Harassment?
October 10, 2022 Stating a claim is much easier than proving hostile work environment harassment. As we teach in EEOC Law Week, in order to prove a hostile work environment, the complainant must show she was subjected to unwelcome conduct, based on a protected EEO...
Ask FELTG: Is It OK to Screen Test Unvaccinated Employees Attending an Agency-wide Meeting?
September 6, 2022 As concern about the virus has waned, some agencies have started to allow employees to travel. And that serves as the backbone of this question. Here are the details: A number of agency employees from several locations are gathering for an onsite...
Ask FELTG Tackles Two Questions About Reasonable Accommodation
Q: An employee claims to have a family member with an underlying medical condition that makes him susceptible to severe COVID. May the agency ask for medical documentation about the family member’s condition, if that’s why the employee is seeking telework as a...
Ask FELTG: Can Discipline Be Used as a ‘Prior’ to Aggravate the Penalty?
A FELTG reader shared the following hypothetical scenario: An employee is issued a decision to suspend dated July 1. The dates of the suspension stated in the decision are August 3-7. If any misconduct that happens between July 1 and August 7, can that be considered...
Ask FELTG: Can employee use sick leave for family member with health condition without invoking FMLA – and then PPL?
May 24, 2022 We receive a lot of questions about leave through Ask FELTG, and each situation seems to have its own unique challenge. The subscriber who asked this question further explained that the hypothetical employee was the father of a newborn. FELTG Senior...
Ask FELTG: If an employee with a disability can perform his job at the worksite, why would telework as a reasonable accommodation be necessary?
It wouldn’t be necessary, though the agency could still choose to grant telework as the accommodation if it wanted to. EEOC guidance suggests that the employee’s preference on accommodation should be considered, but ultimately the agency gets to choose the...
Ask FELTG Tackles Calendar Days in Suspensions and Holidays in FMLA and PPL
March 8, 2022 Sometimes to understand Federal employment law, you need an old-fashioned print calendar by your side, as these two recent Ask FELTG submissions illustrate. We know that suspensions must be served as calendar days, not workdays, but how can we ensure...
Ask FELTG: Is an employee covered under FMLA when his adult child has a temporary inability to perform a daily activity?
Here’s a hypothetical scenario posed by a FELTG student: An adult child is involved in a car accident. The adult child will be undergoing a lengthy recovery period and, during that time, may not be capable of performing one of the activities of daily living (ADL). The...
Ask FELTG: How do you know if an employee really has PTSD and, if so, how do you accommodate it?
Unfortunately, there is a bit of skepticism in the workplace about Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD), as demonstrated by this question received in a recent class taught by FELTG Instructor Shana Palmieri, LCSW. PTSD is classified as an anxiety disorder that...