Requirement for High School Diploma Could Violate Act

Employers are now dealing with some uncertainty after receiving a letter addressed to potential employers from the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. The letter was a warning that stated that to require a high school diploma in order for an employee to be hired was actually a possible violation of the American with Disabilities Act. It is believed that this could have a negative turn in which high school students will believe that it is not important or necessary to graduate from high school and receive their high school diploma.

Employers could be faced with major trouble if they happened to screen out a job applicant who did not receive a high school diploma because of their learning disability. This information has left a lot of employers stumped as to how to approach the situation at hands, especially when it comes to the hiring process of job applicants.

A lawyer who works with a labor and employment law firm, Maria Greco Danaher, has said that this letter means that the employers need to figure out whether a job applicant and potential employee did not receive their high school diploma due to an actual learning disability or simply because they chose not to finish high school or to drop out. There are certain individuals who were not able to obtain a diploma because of their disability but would still be able to hold certain job positions which is why this is something that needs to be done and is something employers need to take notice of in order to be fair to those who do, in fact, have a learning disability.

On one of her blog posts, Danaher says that there are certain qualifications that employers look for when hiring potential employees and that one of those qualifications may be a high school diploma. However, it is not fair to excludes those who are disabled from having an opportunity at the job or from being hired or considered for employments simply because they do not have a high school diploma.

On the other hand, a lawyer who works for Ballard Spahr in the Philadelphia area, Mary Theresa Metzler, has said that this entire situation could be unfortunate for the general public. She believes that many individual will have less of an incentive to finish high school and earn the necessary diploma that is needed to land certain job positions.

But while Metzler feels this way, the legal counsel for the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, Peggy Mastroianni, does not believe that this regulation would prevent people from finishing high school and obtaining their diploma. She believes that people have common sense and know that they need to get as much education as possible to land a successful job position.