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| Photo by martakat83. Used under a Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic license. |
Question from a Big I New York member: One of our employees is considering donating a kidney. Would the disability that follows be covered under the New York State Disability Benefits Law?
Answer: Yes. The New York State Disability Benefits Law is found in Article 9 of the New York Workers’ Compensation Law.
- That article says that “Disability benefits shall be payable to an eligible employee for disabilities …”
- The definitions section of the article says that “disability” is “the inability of an employee, as a result of injury or sickness not arising out of and in the course of an employment, to perform the regular duties of his employment …”
- The same section says that the terms “injury” and “sickness” include “incapacitation as a result of being an organ donor in a transplant operation.”
Since incapacitation as a result of being an organ donor in a transplant operation is “injury or sickness,” and disability results from injury or sickness, then it follows that an eligible employee may receive disability benefits for some period of time after a kidney donation.