We have always preached preventive law, that is, using our knowledge of employment law and HR practices to counsel employers how to prevent claims or lawsuits from ever happening.   It’s far less expensive, time consuming and distracting to spend a little time and money now to comply with the law, than not to and gamble that you won’t get sued.  Its a bad bet — ask anyone who has been sued.

The EEOC is also on interested in preventing employment discrimination and in this regard was enthusiastic about recent research conducted by Cornell U. which sought to identify employers who are at risk of being sued under the ADA.   The researchers studied EEOC and state charge data, as well as EEO-1 reports, and whirled it all together using a sophistaicted analytical model and voila!   Out came the following:

(1)  transportation and service companies were more likely to face ADA charges than manual, professional and sales companies;

(2) federal contractors were more likely to face ADA charges than non-federal contractors; and

(3) more charges are to be anticipated against both small and large employers.

Helpful yet?

It seems that small employers do not have the resources for an adequate compliance program, and large employers have more employees, and therefore more charges.

An EEOC official said that all of this “opens the door for conducting predictive research in terms of what are the characteristics of employers that may lead to these types of charges.”

We hope this is true, and realize that this “predictive research” is only in its infancy.  But until the research and analysis is completed we can only say: read our posts about how not to get sued!

(Thanks to Bloomberg BNA for the info reported).