Earlier this year, we told you about a recent case from Kentucky in which a federal court found that it was not reasonable for a plaintiff to expect his employer to accommodate his lifting restrictions by spreading essential lifting requirements among the plaintiff’s co-workers.
Just last month, a similar question made its way to the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals in Renee Majors v. General Electric Co., No. 12-2893 (7th Cir. 2013), and fortunately for employers, the court found that this plaintiff-employee’s “shared lifting” accommodation request was unreasonable.
Qualified Individuals with Disabilities and the Reasonable Accommodation Obligation
Under the Americans with Disabilities Act (“ADA”), job applicants and employees with physical or mental impairments are considered “qualified” for a given position if they can perform the essential functions of the job “with or without a reasonable accommodation.” Notably, however, a proposed accommodation that imposes an undue hardship on the employer is not considered “reasonable” under the law. Of course, many legal battles have been waged over these legal standards, especially with regard to the proper interpretation of “reasonable accommodation” and the question of whether certain lifting requirements can be shared among co-workers.
Shared Lifting as a Reasonable Accommodation
Due to a work-related shoulder injury, the plaintiff in Renee Majors v. General Electric Co. was unable to lift more than 20 pounds. Nonetheless, she applied for a position that required heavy lifting, suggesting that another employee could lift heavy objects for her whenever necessary. Unimpressed by this proposed accommodation, General Electric (“GE”) passed over the plaintiff, even though she was next in line based on GE’s seniority-based bidding system.
Believing that her right to a reasonable accommodation had been violated, the employee initiated legal action against GE, claiming that it should have awarded her the position and required another employee to do her heavy lifting for her. The trial court disagreed, granting summary judgment to GE. The employee then appealed to the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals. Upholding the trial court’s decision, the Seventh Circuit agreed that it was not reasonable for the plaintiff to expect GE to accommodate her lifting restriction by allocating the heavy lifting to another employee. Therefore, because she could not perform the essential function of heaving lifting, she was not medically qualified for the position and was not wronged under the ADA when she was passed over for it.
Plaintiff’s Retaliation Claim Also Unfounded
Notably, the plaintiff also claimed that GE retaliated against her for bringing her ADA complaint when it supposedly denied her overtime hours and the opportunity to work on certain Fridays. Finding that the plaintiff failed to successfully establish a causal link between her EEOC filing and the alleged retaliation, the Seventh Circuit affirmed the district court’s grant of summary judgment on this allegation as well. According to the court, the plaintiff’s only evidence of retaliatory treatment was close temporal proximity between the EEOC filing and the alleged denial of overtime. According to the court, this was not enough, especially since the plaintiff could not point to any “similarly-situated” co-workers who were treated more favorably than she was treated.
The Lesson for Employers
The obvious lesson for employers is that, under most circumstances, courts within the Seventh Circuit will not require them to accommodate employees with lifting restrictions by spreading essential lifting requirements among other employees. In order to achieve such a favorable decision, however, an employer must be able to demonstrate that it went to the effort of meeting with the applicant/employee and, in good faith, engaged in an interactive dialogue to come up with an appropriate accommodation (including a review of vacant positions that the individual can do). If, at that point, neither party can devise a reasonable accommodation for the lifting restriction, an employer may make the hard decision to deny the application or discharge the employee, rather than require another employee to do an essential part of the job.
If you have any questions or would like additional information about this case or the reasonable accommodation process, please contact Steve Lyman at slyman@wp.hallrender.com or your regular Hall Render attorney.
