Pittsburgh officials are considering a $45,000 settlement with a longtime employee who filed a lawsuit in February, accusing them of improperly posting his confidential medical information online.

The proposed settlement was introduced Tuesday before City Council, which may vote on the bill later this month. The legislation and the lawsuit identify the employee as John Doe.

According to the suit, filed in U.S. District Court, the employee has worked for the city since 1979. He approached officials in December 2007 to say he suffered from depression and from medication-related fatigue.

The suit says the employee was asked to take a "fitness for duty psychiatric evaluation."

The employee's name, medical issues and evaluation were discussed at public meetings of the city's Civil Service Commission in January and February 2008, and the minutes of those meetings were posted on the Internet for public consumption, the lawsuit said.

The minutes remained on the Internet, in violation of the confidentiality provisions of the federal Americans with Disabilities Act, even after the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission ruled that the city mishandled the case, the suit said.

Samuel Cordes, the employee's attorney, said the information was removed from the Web after he sought a court order. By then, according to his application for a restraining order, the employee's information had been online for about two years and was readily available to anybody surfing the Web.

Employers are permitted to ask limited questions about a person's disability, and the information is supposed to be held in confidence, not posted "for the world to see," Mr. Cordes said.

The city didn't respond to a request for comment.

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