Court Rejects Perceived Disability Claim

While I’m out at the ABA House of Delegates meeting (and will provide an update on that later on), the Connecticut Appellate Court today ruled that Connecticut’s anti-discrimination laws do not cover a “perceived disability” claim.

What does that mean? Under federal law, an employer who regards an employee as having a disability is prohibited from taking adverse action against that employee because of that perception.

The court, in Desrosiers v. Diageo, said Connecticut law didn’t have the same requirement.

You can download the decision here.  Note that the decision is not official until August 14th.

I’ll have more on this ruling and the other parts of this case in an upcoming post.

(Disclosure: I represented one of the individual defendants.)