Yesterday, Charlie Sheen filed his high profile lawsuit against Chuck Lorre and Warner Brothers.<\/p>\n
Among others, Charlie Sheen asserts claims for disability discrimination under California\u2019s Fair Employment and Housing Act (\u201cFEHA\u201d). Interestingly, nowhere in his complaint does Mr. Sheen allege that he is disabled. Instead, he alleges that Defendants have accused him of having physical and mental disabilities. Likewise, Mr. Sheen alleges that Warner Brothers contends that health-care experts have described him as suffering from a \u201chypomaniac\u201d psychological state and observed that he is in an alleged \u201cmanic\u201d and\/or \u201cbi-polar\u201d state.<\/p>\n
Perhaps Charlie Sheen is simply unwilling to claim that he is disabled or his lawyers have not had a chance to have him diagnosed. Regardless, Mr. Sheen can still pursue disability discrimination claims without actually alleging that he is disabled.<\/p>\n
Like the American\u2019s with Disabilities Act, FEHA not only protects individuals with disabilities, it protects individuals who are \u201cregarded as\u201d being disabled. The rationale behind affording such protection to individuals \u201cregarded as\u201d disabled is that stereotyping individuals as disabled is deemed to be just as handicapping as the limitations flowing from actual impairments. Accordingly, in his lawsuit, Charlie Sheen has stated viable claims that he suffered unlawful harassment, retaliation and discrimination because of his perceived disabilities.<\/p>\n
Finally, Mr. Sheen alleges that Defendants failed to provide reasonable accommodations for his perceived disabilities. While it is clear that employers have no obligation to accommodate employees that are merely \u201cregarded as\u201d disabled under the American\u2019s with Disabilities Act, employers are obligated to provide reasonable accommodations to employees that are \u201cregarded as\u201d disabled under California\u2019s FEHA. Gelfo v. Lockheed Martin Corp.<\/em> (2006) 140 Cal.App.4th 34.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Yesterday, Charlie Sheen filed his high profile lawsuit against Chuck Lorre and Warner Brothers. Among others, Charlie Sheen asserts claims for disability discrimination under California\u2019s Fair Employment and Housing Act (\u201cFEHA\u201d). Interestingly, nowhere in his complaint does Mr. Sheen allege…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":249,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[46,48,47,49],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/davidlevylaw.com\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/191"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/davidlevylaw.com\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/davidlevylaw.com\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/davidlevylaw.com\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/davidlevylaw.com\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=191"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/davidlevylaw.com\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/191\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":216,"href":"https:\/\/davidlevylaw.com\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/191\/revisions\/216"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/davidlevylaw.com\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/249"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/davidlevylaw.com\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=191"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/davidlevylaw.com\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=191"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/davidlevylaw.com\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=191"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}