For 22 years, a man with cerebral palsy worked at an AMC movie theater in Owings Mills, Maryland. In a settlement announced Sept. 22, 2026, AMC agreed to pay $56,000 under a two-year consent decree resolving an EEOC lawsuit in which the agency alleged the chain denied him two small workplace changes and then cut his hours until he resigned.
Two requests the EEOC called simple
According to the EEOC’s September 2025 lawsuit announcement, the employee asked for two accommodations. One was a ticket scanner with a strap and a side button, easier to operate with his disability. The other was a large-print list of movies and the theater numbers they were showing in.
Debra Lawrence, the EEOC’s regional attorney, said in that announcement that the employee had worked for the company for 22 years and requested very simple accommodations to continue as an effective employee. The agency said AMC denied the requests.
The hours cut and the resignation
The lawsuit alleged what happened next. After the requests were denied, the EEOC said, AMC drastically reduced the man’s hours, and he was forced to resign around September 2023. The EEOC’s case treats the reduced schedule as part of the discrimination, not just the refusal of equipment.
The suit was filed on Sept. 12, 2025, in the U.S. District Court for the District of Maryland as EEOC v. American Multi-Cinema Inc., Case No. 25-cv-03003-CJC. It charged violations of the Americans with Disabilities Act. The EEOC also said it had tried to resolve the matter through pre-litigation settlement talks before filing.
What the ADA requires, as the EEOC applies it
The ADA requires employers to provide reasonable accommodations to qualified employees with disabilities unless doing so would cause undue hardship. In the EEOC’s settlement announcement, Lawrence put the same point in operational terms: federal law requires employers to modify how work is performed before deciding that an employee with a disability cannot perform the job.
Karen McDonough, the acting director of the EEOC’s Baltimore Field Office, added that employers have a legal obligation to provide reasonable accommodations and that the agency will hold them accountable when they fail to do so.
The accommodations at issue were low in cost and concrete: a piece of equipment and a printed list. Neither request involved changing the job’s duties. Both concerned the tools used to perform the same duties the employee had handled for more than two decades, which is the distinction the EEOC’s quoted language about modifying how work is performed turns on. That is part of what makes the case a useful reference for other hourly workers, since the request that ended a 22-year job was not a costly redesign of the workplace.
What AMC will pay and what it must change
The $56,000 is the monetary relief. The EEOC’s announcement lists the rest of the decree as injunctive terms lasting two years: AMC must update and implement written policies on reasonable accommodations and disability discrimination, train its staff and post a notice for employees.
AMC will pay under the consent decree, and the announcement does not describe the agreement as an admission of liability. The release does not say how the $56,000 is divided between back pay and other damages, and it does not name the employee.
For a household living on hourly wages, the arithmetic is worth noting. The payment is small next to the 22 years of work at issue, and the release includes no calculation of the wages lost from the reduced schedule. That gap means the $56,000 cannot be read as a measure of what the hours cut cost.
The time limits that apply to any new charge
The case reached federal court about two years after the resignation, and the EEOC’s own rules explain why timing matters. Its time-limits page says a discrimination charge generally must be filed within 180 calendar days of the event, extended to 300 days where state or local law prohibits the same discrimination. The deadline usually applies to each event separately, so an employee who faces a denied request and, later, a cut in hours may be dealing with two clocks.
The page advises filing as early as possible and says a field office can help someone who is unsure of the deadline. Neither the settlement announcement nor the lawsuit announcement describes a claims process for other AMC employees, and this settlement resolves the one employee’s claim.
What the decree signals to other employers
Consent decrees in EEOC cases serve two purposes at once: they pay the individual and they bind the employer to changes for a fixed period. In this case the changes are written policies, training and a posted notice for two years, which are the parts that reach workers who were never named in the suit.
The controlling record for the amount, the statute, the court and the terms is the EEOC’s settlement announcement dated Sept. 22, 2026, and the agency’s original lawsuit announcement describes the underlying allegations.
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An AI assistant helped draft this article, which was checked against the EEOC announcements it links.
