Posted: 12/31/2006 - ADA DOES NOT CONTROL OPM DISABILITY RETIREMENT

Summary:

A Supreme Court Decision Denying ADA Protection to a non-Federal Government Employee Does Not Impact OPM Disability Retirement Cases.

By Harvey Friedman, Attorney at Law, Washington, DC

The ADA covers employees in the private sector. It does not cover government employees. On that ground alone, the Supreme Court's decision of 1/8/02 in Toyota Motors, will not affect the rights of government employees in disability retirement cases.

The Supreme Court held that the symptoms of a medical condition must affect more than the employee's ability to perform the particular duties of a particular job position, and that a showing of disability outside of the workplace, such as an inability to shower, to drive, etc. is germane under the ADA.

OPM disability retirement law is the OPPOSITE. OPM's focus is entirely on whether the medical condition disables the government employee from performing one or more of the critical elements of his of her current job position. The law does not require a disability retirement applicant to show disability as to non-workplace activities.

WARNING: Despite the law, winning OPM disability retirement, requires that your claim be believed by OPM. It would be unbelievable that someone claiming an inability to perform job duties due to the pain of carpal tunnel syndrome, was not similarly effected doing repetitive tasks outside of the workplace. The non-workplace disability corroborates the workplace claim. Therefore non-job related inability's are almost always essential to corroborate the truthfulness of your workplace claim and to win your case.



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