By Vin Gurrieri

Law360 (May 5, 2020, 10:01 PM EDT) -- Employers should be on the lookout for updated U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission guidance on accommodating workers with medical conditions after the agency posted new guidance Tuesday but later pulled it down for revision because it had been "misinterpreted" after becoming public.

The removed guidance was one of three additions the EEOC made to the technical assistance guidance on its website answering various questions surrounding employers' response to the novel coronavirus pandemic.

Sometime after the guidance pertaining to accommodations for workers with underlying medical conditions was posted, the EEOC yanked it and inserted in its place a notation that said the information contained in the guidance "was ... misinterpreted in press reports and social media."

The notation also said that the workplace bias watchdog was in the process of "revising the information to ensure that it is clear."

An EEOC representative on Tuesday evening declined to elaborate on the nature of the misinterpretation.

Besides the guidance that was removed, the EEOC made two other additions on Tuesday to its expanding Q&A document, which the agency has updated periodically in recent weeks to include things like a "Return to Work" section. Both of the surviving guidance questions posted Tuesday were additions to that section.

One of the additions outlines what employees need to do when they ask their employers for a reasonable accommodation if they have any of the medical conditions identified by the Centers for Disease Control & Prevention as those that put a person at greater risk of contracting COVID-19.

Employees, or third parties such as their doctors, have to tell their employer that they need an accommodation due to an underlying medical condition. A request can be either spoken or in writing, and it need not specifically mention the Americans with Disabilities Act or use the phrase "reasonable accommodation," according to the EEOC.

Moreover, the agency said in its guidance that employers, when they get such a request, have a right to "ask questions or seek medical documentation" to help determine whether the employee "has a disability and if there is a reasonable accommodation, barring undue hardship, that can be provided."

The second surviving guidance offered examples of accommodations that — assuming they don't pose an undue hardship on businesses — can limit the "direct threat" that an employee faces in the workplace.  

Those examples included "additional or enhanced" protective gear such as masks that go "beyond what the employer may generally provide" to returning workers, or physical changes to workplaces such as partitions that separate workers who have a disability from colleagues or customers.

Other potential reasonable accommodations include an employer jettisoning certain "marginal" tasks that workers perform but aren't part of their core duties, temporarily changing their usual work schedule to one that involves less interaction with other people, or moving employees to an area of the worksite that spaces them out from others, according to the agency's guidance.

The EEOC noted in its guidance that its examples do not comprise an exhaustive list of the accommodations that can be provided and encouraged businesses and workers during the pandemic "to be creative and flexible" as they toss around ideas.

--Additional reporting by Danielle Nichole Smith. Editing by Jay Jackson Jr.

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