Way back in September we cautioned employers not to fire employees for taking legally prescribed meds, and cited a case where this was the employer’s policy and practice.  The EEOC has just announced a $50,000 settlement in a case brought on behalf of a lab technician who suffered an adverse reaction at work to medications prescribed to treat her bipolar disorder.  She was fired when the drug test that her employer forced her to take revealed her legally-prescribed medications.  

The ADA prohibits discrimination on the basis of a disability as well as a “perceived disability,” and in this case the employer must have fired her because of her perceived “disability” since an EEOC attorney stated that “Making employment decisions on the basis of stereotypical assumptions about disability-based medications is one of the problems the ADA was designed to combat."