While the Americans with Disabilities Act may require an employer to remove marginal job functions as an accommodation for an employee with a disability, it does not require the reassignment of all duties.
An employee who can do nothing but show up for work is not qualified for ADA’s protections, a recent opinion from the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, Bell v. Hercules Liftboat Company, LLC (No. 12-30843 (April 11, 2013)), illustrates.
Sue Bell worked for Hercules at its Lafayette, La. location. When she returned from a leave of absence for breast cancer treatment, her medication prevented her from performing most of her job duties. She delegated her responsibilities to her two subordinates but the company soon eliminated her position.
She sued, alleging that Hercules fired her because of her disability and refused to accommodate her impairment, in violation of the Louisiana Employment Discrimination Law. LEDL uses the same standards as ADA. She also alleged violations of ERISA. To support her ERISA claims, she stated that she would be completely unable to do any kind of work for several years.
The U.S. District Court for the Middle District of Louisiana dismissed her ERISA claims. The employer then moved for summary judgment on her disability claims, arguing that because she couldn’t work, she was not otherwise qualified. The district court agreed, granting summary judgment for the employer.
Bell appealed, attempting to square her “totally disabled” ERISA claims with her disability discrimination claims. The 5th Circuit acknowledged that such conflicting claims can be reconciled — but that Bell failed to do so.
The U.S. Supreme Court held in Cleveland v. Policy Management (526 U.S. 795 (1999)) that a terminated employee could receive both Social Security Disability Insurance benefits for being totally disabled and successfully allege that her employer wrongly fired her, in violation of ADA.
Employees can successfully explain such inconsistencies in several ways, the Court explained. First, ADA may have a different definition of “disability” than other laws. Second, an employee’s condition can change over time. Lastly, if an employee is qualified to perform the essential functions of his or her job with an accommodation, but the employer refuses to provide an accommodation, then the employee may be both eligible for benefits and have a valid ADA claim.
To reconcile her ERISA and ADA claims, Bell said that she could have performed her job “with the accommodation of her underlings.”
But reassigning all of an employee’s duties is not a reasonable accommodation, the court said. If Bell “can’t perform the essential functions of [her] job absent assigning those duties to someone else … [she] cannot be reasonably accommodated as a matter of law,” the court said, granting summary judgment for the employer.
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