Federal Appeals Court: Companies Can't Be Held to COVID-era Actions When Determining Reasonable ADA Accommodation

One of the sacrosanct hallmarks of the Americans with Disabilities Act is the responsibility of an employer to provide – upon request – a reasonable accommodation to allow someone to perform the essential functions of a job.

But what happens when an employer who has been making such an accommodation decides that it’s not working and terminates an employee asking for an extension to that accommodation? That might seem like an opening for a noncompliance lawsuit, but that isn’t always the case.

The courts can – and have – come down on the employer’s side in ADA lawsuits, such as when a federal court in Alabama held that a company could require workers to stop taking certain prescription medications if their use presented safety concerns.

What about consideration of actions taken during the COVID pandemic of how companies should treat accommodation requests for remote work? Some courts have been willing to consider those factors. But in a recent case, a federal appeals panel specifically rejected pandemic-mandated actions as a benchmark for accommodations a business must make to remain ADA compliant.

In a ruling filed on Nov. 7, the US Court of Appeals for the 11^th Circuit ruled in favor of Schneider National Carriers Inc., a Georgia transportation and logistics company who denied a worker’s request for an indefinite extension to an accommodation that had allowed her to work her overnight area planning manager shift on a part-time, remote basis.

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The former employee, Cierra Geter, was originally granted the accommodation – a three-day remote work week, ten hours per day, after returning from time off under the Family and Medical Leave Act following a diagnosis of post-traumatic stress disorder. But after several months and multiple extensions, the company refused Geter’s request for an indefinite extension of the arrangement and terminated her in April 2019.

The company’s rationale was that the accommodation created an undue hardship, because other employees needed to cover her shifts under the three-day workweek and the remote work prevented her from carrying out in-person duties that were sometimes needed on the overnight shift.

She sued in March 2020, claiming violation of the ADA. Among her arguments, as the case progressed, was that the company’s COVID adjustments, though implemented almost a year after her firing, proved that the company could and should have accommodated her.

Schneider went fully remote for its APM positions early in the pandemic, then adjusted to a hybrid schedule of two days in-office and three working remotely. However, the company went back to a full-time in-office schedule.

Court shuts down pandemic-related argument

In its ruling upholding a lower court’s finding for Schneider, the appellate court held that a company’s response to the pandemic didn’t demonstrate that Geter’s function with the company wasn’t essential. Most importantly, her remaining fully remote would create extra work for her coworkers, which qualifies as an “undue hardship” for the employer, giving reason to deny Geter’s request.

The ruling holds to the principle that if a company can make a reasonable accommodation, it must. But in rejecting the argument that Schneider’s pandemic policy proved that the company could have extended its agreement with Geter, the court also lays out a clear statement that emergency actions can’t be held up as models for long-term operations.

In short, just because companies had to do something to maintain operations during the pandemic doesn’t mean they have to do them as a matter of routine now.

The standard remains whether an accommodation is reasonable, not when it’s merely feasible, and that’s within both the letter and spirit of the law. The ADA was intended to prevent discrimination against people with disabilities – but it can’t be used to force companies to take on unnecessary expense, hardship and risk.

What does this mean for disabled employees? That remains to be seen, as cases make their way through the courts. It could take years before we know the full impact of the pandemic on labor law, especially in the area of ADA compliance. Until then, the case law map is likely to shift more than once, with uncertainty for both employers and their disabled workers and former workers.

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