Disability, Leave & Health Management Blog : Attorneys & Lawyers for Employer Legal Protections in Businesses Nationwide

Does an employer’s duty to reasonably accommodate an employee’s disability include the duty to alleviate commuting challenges caused by the disability? Two courts of appeals recently held that it does unless to do so would be an undue hardship; both decisions reversed summary judgment for the employer on the ADA claims.

In both cases, the plaintiff had a vision impairment which did not interfere with her ability to perform her job. In Livingston v. Fred Meyer Stores, Inc., the plaintiff, a wine steward, could not walk or drive after dark due to her vision impairment. In 2005, the company granted her request for a modified work schedule during the fall and winter months to minimize her driving at night. When the company denied her same request for 2006, the plaintiff refused to work her scheduled shift and was terminated.

The Ninth Circuit held that the company had a duty to accommodate Livingston’s inability to finish her scheduled shift, even though her disability did not affect her ability to function as a wine steward. The court remanded the case to resolve the issue of whether Livingston’s vision impairment was a disability.

In Colwell v. Rite Aid Corp, the plaintiff told her supervisor that her partial blindness made it dangerous and difficult for her to drive at night. The company declined to schedule her on day shifts only, explaining that it “wouldn’t be fair” to other workers. After various efforts to change to day shifts, plaintiff resigned.

The Third Circuit held that employers may need to make reasonable shift changes to accommodate a disabled employee’s disability-related difficulties in getting to work. The court remanded the case to resolve the issue of whether accommodating Colwell’s shift needs would be an undue hardship.

These two decisions extend the length of an employer’s “duty to accommodate” day. That day may begin as early as the time an employee leaves home and may not end until the employee returns home. Is that the temporal extent of the duty? Or does it extend even further to disability-related issues at home related to preparing for work, or an employee’s getting to transportation from home?  For those answers, we will need to await further decisions, but at least according to these two decisions, an employer may find itself more involved in an employee’s commuting issues than it has been previously.

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Sitting in the Rose Garden on July 26, 1990, President G.W.Bush signed the Americans with Disabilities Act and, no doubt intending the historical analogy, declared it "the emancipation proclamation" for those with disabilities. To commemorate the ADA's 20th Anniversary, I am going to re-read my favorite ADA case, the Supreme Court's 2001 decision in PGA Tour, Inc. v. Casey Martin, for at least the 20th time.  You don't have to be a golf or ADA fanatic to appreciate the richness of this opinion.

The issue is stated simply: Due to a serious medical condition, PGA Tour Member Casey Martin needed to use a golf cart when competing, but PGA rules prohibited him from doing so. Martin claimed the PGA’s rule violated Title II of the ADA, which prohibits disability discrimination in public accommodations….and won.　

The Martin decision is special for so many reasons. What an incredible human interest story! Casey Martin had won 17 Oregon Golf Association junior events before he was 15 years old; was the Oregon state champ when a high school senior; was on the Stanford University golf team when it won the NCAA championship; and survived the grueling physical and mental tests to become a member of the PGA Tour. He did all of this despite having since birth, a degenerative circulatory disorder that obstructs blood flow from his right leg to his heart, which has atrophied his right leg. 　 Walking when playing caused him pain, fatigue and anxiety, and created a significant risk of hemorrhaging, developing blood clots, and fracturing his tibia so badly that an amputation might be required. How can you not root for this guy?　

It pits the very old against the very new, the golf traditions going back hundreds of years, beginning with the "Rules of Golf," first adopted by the Royal and Ancient Golf Club of Scotland in 1744, against modern-day notions of equality as encompassed in the ADA, enacted some 250 years after the Rules of Golf.　

It has celebrity appearances. Golf gods Arnold Palmer, Jack Nicklaus and Ken Venturi each testified that fatigue can be a critical factor in a tournament, especially on the last day, and that a competitor using　a cart might have an advantage over walkers.　

It refers to a rich variety of other celebrities, and what a collection it is: the New York Yankees, the American League, the designated hitter, Mary Queen of Scots, the Sopranos, Kurt Vonnegut, Harrison Bergeron, Kafka, Alice in Wonderland, Tiger Woods, Plato, John Q. Public, and George Orwell are all mentioned in the decision. Imagine a dinner party with that guest list!　

It has irony. If riding a cart creates such a competitive advantage, why do most senior tour members, who have the option to ride, walk?　

It raises legal-philosophical issues to ponder: Must a shoe store sell a single shoe to a one-legged person, or can the store insist that the buyer purchase a pair of shoes?

It’s disheartening. The decision cites the testimony of a physiology professor and expert on fatigue who determined that a golfer expends only about 500 calories walking an 18 hole round (about 5 miles), "nutritionally…less than a Big Mac." So much for golf as great exercise.

It has a Solomonic tone. Envision the nine black-robed justices pondering the essence of golf. Justice Souter, in his majority opinion, parses the game and concludes that its essence is shot-making and that walking is neither essential nor indispensable, but merely peripheral, rejecting the PGA’s argument that the walking rule’s purpose is "to inject the element of fatigue into the skill of shot-making." 　　

It has a Scalia dissent and, when it comes to disecting a majority opinion, Justice Scalia has no peers. At the outset, he notes mildly his conclusion: "[T]oday’s opinion exercises a benevolent compassion that the law does not place it within our power to impose." 　In short order, after a delightful romp through law and logic, he reaches this sarcastic crescendo:　

"If one assumes…that the PGA TOUR has some legal obligation to play classic, Platonic golf---and if one assumes the correctness of all the other wrong turns the Court has made to get to this point—then we Justices must confront what is indeed an awesome responsibility. It has been rendered the solemn duty of the Supreme Court of the United States, laid upon it by Congress in pursuance of the Federal Government’s power "[t]o regulate Commerce with foreign Nations, and among the several States,"…to decide What Is Golf. I am sure that the Framers of the Constitution, aware of the 1457 edict of King James II of Scotland prohibiting golf because it interfered with the practice of archery, fully expected that sooner or later the paths of golf and government, the law and the links, would once again cross, and that the judges of this august Court would some day have to wrestle with that age-old jurisprudential question, for which their years of study in the law have so well prepared them: Is someone riding around a golf course from shot to shot really a golfer? The answer, we learn, is yes. The Court ultimately concludes, and it will henceforth be the Law of the Land, that walking is not a "fundamental" aspect of golf." For lovers of sarcasm as a rhetorical device, it sends shivers down your spine.　

That is why PGA Tour v. Martin is my favorite ADA case of all time. And I commend it to you. Happy 20^th to the ADA!

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The ADA and FMLA collided in two cases recently and, whenever that occurs, accident reconstruction, so to speak, is in order. In Wisbey v. City of Lincoln, NE, emergency dispatcher Wisbey was granted intermittent FMLA leave for the "next 6 months or longer" because of depression and anxiety. Her FMLA paperwork prompted the City to question whether she could do her job at all. The City terminated Wisbey after a psychiatrist concluded that Wisbey was not fit for duty. The Eighth Circuit affirmed summary judgment for the City on Wisbey’s ADA and FMLA claims, but the significance of this case is in the court’s blending of FMLA and ADA concepts: 

• "the FMLA does not provide an employee ….with a right to unscheduled and unpredictable, but cumulatively substantial, absences or a right to take unscheduled leave at a moment’s notice for the rest of her career. On the contrary, such a situation implied that she is not qualified for a position where reliable attendance is a bona fide requirement (citation omitted);" 

• "Because Wisbey requested ‘intermittent leave’ for ‘six months or longer’ she did not have a right to FMLA leave."  

In Carmona v. Southwest Airlines Company, the ADA and FMLA collided once again. For seven years, Carmona, a flight attendant, was granted FMLA leave to excuse absences related to psoriatic arthritis. Since he did not work enough hours to renew his FMLA in 2005, his absences were unexcused and he was terminated for excessive absenteeism.

The Fifth Circuit rejected Southwest’s argument that Carmona was not a "qualified individual with a disability" under the ADA because he could not meet the essential function of regular attendance. and held that because Southwest "tolerated [Carmona’s] FMLA-approved absences for seven years," which permitted him to miss over half of each month without notice, regular attendance was not an essential function. The court said "if Southwest had denied Carmona’s request for intermittent FMLA leave [i.e., violated the FMLA], it might have had a strong argument that as a matter of law Carmona was not qualified to work as a flight attendant." Following this logic, regular attendance will not be an essential function of a job for anyone who has taken FMLA leave, since the employer tolerated that legally required leave.

The outcome of these two ADA-FMLA collisions? While Wisbey understates (if not misstates) the FMLA leave entitlement, Carmona punishes an employer in an ADA case for complying with the FMLA! The message from these two cases is clear: When your analysis brings you to the intersection of these two laws, proceed with extreme caution!

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Emerging technology clashes with ADA accessibility requirements, as the U.S. Department of Justice and U.S. Department of Education warn colleges and university about requiring classroom use of electronic readers. In an open letter to college and university presidents, the federal departments "express[ed] concern" that some electronic book readers "lack an accessible text-to-speech function," making them inaccessible to students who are blind or have low vision. The letter warns that requiring use of inaccessible readers is discrimination under the ADA and Rehabilitation Act unless disabled students are "provided accommodations or modifications that permit them to receive all the education benefits provided by the technology in an equally effective and equally integrated manner."

The letter comes soon after the DOJ entered into settlement agreements with numerous colleges and universities that participated in a pilot program to use Amazon’s Kindle DX in the classroom. In those agreements, the universities agreed not to require or recommend use of any dedicated electronic book reader unless it is fully accessible to individuals who are blind or have low vision, or the universities provide reasonable accommodation to enable student to acquire the same information, engage in the same interactions and enjoy the same services as sighted students with substantially equivalent ease of use.

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Reassigning an employee to a “vacant” position is a form of reasonable accommodation under the ADA. Determining whether a position is “vacant” is usually pretty easy, but not always, as illustrated by recent decisions by the Tenth and District of Columbia Circuit Courts of Appeals.

In Duvall v. Georgia Pacific, the plaintiff sought reassignment to a position occupied by temporary contract workers. Is a position filled by a temp “vacant”? The Tenth Circuit held that since the position filled by the temp was not available to a similarly situated, non-disabled employee, it was not “vacant” and was not available to the plaintiff.

Three weeks after Duvall, in McFadden v. Ballard Spahr Andrews & Ingersoll, LLP, the D.C. Circuit relied more on Webster’s Dictionary and, without articulating the Duvall analysis, ended up in pretty much the same place. The plaintiff sought reassignment as the receptionist, claiming the position was vacant because a temp was filling in for the regular receptionist, who was on medical leave. The Court concluded that the regular receptionist “held, filled or occupied” (words from Webster’s) the receptionist position, so that it was not “vacant.” The Court’s discussion suggested that it also recognized that the employer had not made the receptionist position available generally. The Court said that the employer had not sought a replacement for the regular receptionist, had not posted a job listing, and had not “otherwise acted as though it considered the position vacant.”

According to the EEOC’s Guidance, a position is “vacant” if it is available when the employee asks for reasonable accommodation or a position that the employer knows will become available within a reasonable period of time.

Other issues can complicate an employer’s responsibility to consider reassignment to a vacant position as a reasonable accommodation, such as: Must an employer train the employee to be reassigned, or provide a period of familiarization? How long after the request for reassignment does the obligation to identify vacancies end? And of course, the significant issue that the Supreme Court had agreed to hear, and then dismissed as moot when the parties settled their dispute: whether a disabled employee seeking a vacant position as an accommodation, and who meets the minimum qualifications of the position  is entitled to it, i.e., receives a mandatory preference, or must compete with others for the position.

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We readily conceded that our recent post concerning the Hooters waitress placed on “weight probation” was “not your typical weight discrimination” case. Here is a more typical one, which also addresses whether an employer may consider the “worst case scenario,” so to speak, in determining whether an employee is a qualified individual with a disability.  In Wilkerson v. Shinseki, the employer’s doctor concluded that the plaintiff, a 338 pound boiler plant operator with “largely uncontrolled and uncontrollable diabetes” who worked at the Cheyenne Veteran Affairs Medical Center, failed his annual fitness exam based on the doctor’s concern about plaintiff’s ability to perform challenging physical tasks. His employer reassigned him to a housekeeping position, which paid $9 per hour less than the boiler operator position. 

In affirming summary judgment for the employer on the Rehabilitation Act claim, the Tenth Circuit Court of Appeals held the plaintiff was not a qualified individual with a disability, noting that the VA’s safety guidelines excluded those with uncontrolled or poorly controlled insulin-dependent diabetes from boiler plant operator positions and that an operator must be able to react instantly to any dangerous situation with some degree of physical agility, which might include climbing ladders and going up and down stairs quickly. The Court said that the plaintiff “would pose a danger to himself and others should he fall from a ladder” and also cited the testimony of plaintiff’s supervisor that if a boiler were to explode, “the force would bring down the entire building that houses them.”

The plaintiff minimized the dangers of his working as a boiler operator, noting that nearly all of his work was “light duty,“ that he climbed a ladder only occasionally, and had worked in this position for two years without incident.

The Court held that an employer can “set standards not only for the mundane work but also for the exceptional” and can consider the “potentially disastrous effects” if plaintiff cannot respond to that exceptional situation safely and efficiently, so long as the need to perform in an emergency is a “realistic component of the job.” This is especially so, the Court noted, where the physical safety of others may be at risk.

An employer seeking to ensure an employee can respond safely and efficiently to the exceptional situation with potentially disastrous effects should consider including such an explicit requirement in the job description. Challenges to such requirements are likely to come from individuals excluded from the position, whether due to a disability or any other reason. The Wilkerson case establishes that such requirements will be upheld so long as responding to the “worst case scenario,” so to speak, is a “realistic component” of the job.

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