Once an Accommodation, Always an Accommodation?

A parts clerk suffers a stroke. Following the stroke, the clerk returns to work without restrictions but still has difficulty moving his left side. The clerk, however, continues to receive rehab and all parties expect that his condition will improve. Based on that expectation, the clerk’s supervisors tell him that they will accommodate him as best they can as long as he can reasonably perform most of his job, which happens to include being able to lift 50 pounds. Over the next 15 months, the clerk has difficulty completing all of his tasks in a safe and timely manner, but his employer elects not to reprimand him in light of his full release and the expectation that he will continue to improve. The employee does not improve, though, and so the employer offers the clerk a job transfer. The employee accepts but fails to adjust to the new position, and the employer terminates his employment. The clerk then sues claiming that, because the employer accommodated him for 15 months without complaint, it was obligated to continue doing so.

The question is: Is he correct?

A federal district court in North Carolina recently tackled this question and—based on the specific facts of the case—answered it with a “no.”

In Moore v. Wal-Mart Stores East, LP, the court noted that, even after 15 months, the clerk was unable to perform the essential functions of his job with or without a reasonable accommodation. He could not, for example, lift more than 20 pounds or safely climb ladders on his own and could only do so with assistance from others, which the court noted was unreasonable because it effectively reallocated the job’s essential functions to others.

As for the clerk’s claim that the employer was obligated to continue providing the accommodation it had given him for 15 months, the court found that the employer was not required to maintain a diminished level of exertion indefinitely. Although the employer had accommodated the clerk by allowing him to resume working while only performing certain functions, there was no legal duty to create a “permanent light-duty position that does not otherwise exist.”

According to the court, it could not punish the employer by deeming it to have “conceded the reasonableness of so far-reaching an accommodation.” Otherwise, it would discourage employers “from doing precisely what was done here, which was to temporarily lessen the physical requirements of a job in hopes that the employee’s functional capacity would be restored.” That result, said the court, would clearly be at odds with the purpose of the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA).