SHRM pays $221K to settle disability discrimination lawsuit

Who was involved: The Society for Human Resource Management (SHRM) and three HR professionals who are hearing impaired.

What happened: The HR professionals are members of SHRM. They alleged the organization violated Title III of the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA), which requires businesses to ensure that individuals with disabilities can access goods and services. Specifically, the HR pros said the training and events teams failed to provide reasonable accommodations to ensure its online content was accessible to hearing-impaired and d/Deaf individuals. Plaintiffs stated in their complaint that SHRM habitually provided inadequate transcriptions, captioning, and sign language interpretation in the following products:

• Large in-person events (Conferences & Expos)
• Instructor-led and live online programs (Cert Prep Webinars, Educational Programs, Podcasts, Webcasts, and Conference Live-streams)
• Learning system content (E-Learning Modules, On-Demand Content)

In the complaint, plaintiffs stated that SHRM’s leadership would initially promise delivery of accommodations, only to delay or forget, then be unresponsive to repeated attempts to obtain event transcriptions or refunds. These barriers, when stacked together, effectively made continuing education experiences, and by proxy, certification, inaccessible to d/Deaf members of the HR community.

Result: SHRM agreed to pay $221,500 and take several improvement actions to resolve the ADA lawsuit. Coming off the top, $185,000 will cover the plaintiffs’ attorneys’ fees. The remaining balance will be portioned out to the HR pros based on their accessibility issues. Two plaintiffs will receive $16,000 each, and the third will receive $4,500.

Post-resolution costs to SHRM

In addition to the financial payout, SHRM has agreed to:

• present training through an outside consultant to all employees involved with administering SHRM’s Accommodations Policy and/or responding to requests for accommodations
• publicize a revised Accommodation Policy for members, and designate an individual to oversee its implementation
• provide high-quality captioning and other accommodations for the following products within 1 year:
  • Large in-person events (Conferences & Expos)
  • Instructor-led and live online programs (Cert Prep Webinars, Educational Programs, Podcasts, Webcasts, and Conference Live-streams)
  • Learning system content (E-Learning Modules, On-Demand Content)

Info: Ruffa v. Society for Human Resource Management, No. 4:21-cv-05549-DMR (N.D. Ca. 6/24/22).