The 3d U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals has held that under certain circumstances, the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) may obligate an employer to accommodate an employee’s disability-related difficulties in getting to work.
The Court reversed summary judgment in favor of an employer and held that changing a part-time employee’s schedule to the day shift because her monocular vision made it dangerous for her to drive at night could be a reasonable accommodation under ADA. Colwell v. Rite Aid Corporation, 3d Circ., No. 08-4675, April 8, 2010.
In April 2005, the woman started working as a part-time retail clerk at a Rite Aid store in Old Forge, Pa, and was generally working weekdays from 5 to 9 p.m. A few months after she began working there, she was diagnosed with “retinal vein occlusion and glaucoma,” eventually leaving her blind in one eye.
In September 2005, Colwell reported to her supervisor her partial blindness made the drive to work at night dangerous and difficult for her, and requested a switch to a day shift (9 a.m. to 2 p.m.) so she could drive safely to work. Public transportation was not an option, because the buses stopped running at 6 p.m. in that area.
The workers was told her shift would not be changed because it “wouldn’t be fair” to the other employees. At that point, the employee began to rely on relatives to drive her to work, even though she said it was a “hardship” for her family.
On Oct. 12, 2005, after a number of unsuccessful attempts to switch her shift to days permanently, the woman turned in a letter of resignation to Rite Aid saying she felt she had “not been given fair treatment.” Rite Aid never responded to her note. A few months after leaving her position with Rite Aid, she filed a lawsuit that included a claim that the company did not accommodate her disability by refusing to switch her to the day shift.
The district court granted summary judgment to Rite Aid on Colwell’s failure-to-accommodate claim, on the basis that their employee “did not need an accommodation to perform her job once she arrived at work.” The lower court found the accommodation request “had nothing to do with the work environment or the manner and circumstances under which she performed her work,” and that the ADA only covers barriers “that exist inside the workplace.”
The Third Circuit reversed the decision, disagreeing with Rite Aid’s position that their employee’s difficulties amounted to a “commuting problem unrelated to the workplace.” Instead, the Court found the reach of the ADA is not limited in that way, and changing her work schedule to day shift was, in fact, the type of accommodation contemplated by the ADA.
The Court pointed to language within the ADA in which the term “reasonable accommodation” is defined to specifically include “modified work schedules,” and that what the woman was requesting was, in essence, a schedule change. The Court held “under certain circumstances the ADA can obligate an employer to accommodate an employee’s disability-related difficulties in getting to work, if reasonable.”
Because the worker’s requested accommodation was a change in workplace condition entirely within the company’s control, and would have allowed her to get to work to perform her job, the Court found the shift change could be viewed as a reasonable accommodation. (workersxzcompxzkit)
Although in this case, the Court held ADA contemplates an employer may need to modify an employee’s work schedule to accommodate the individual’s disability-related difficulties in getting to work, the employer is not precluded from asserting a defense that the re-scheduling may create an “undue hardship” or financial burden if, in fact, it does.
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