Yesterday, in an instructive decision, the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals affirmed an employer’s summary judgment on disability discrimination and failure to accommodate claims based on the former employee’s withdrawal/failure to participate in the interactive process. Wilson v. ODMAS, No. 23-3994 (6TH Cir. Aug. 14, 2024). The Court agreed that the employee failed to show that she proposed a reasonable accommodation when she refused to complete or return forms from her physician confirming the disability and necessity for the requested accommodations of schedule flexibility and telework even though she had previously requested and exhausted FMLA leave and short-term disability. This was a “critical failure” to participate in, and “voluntary withdrawal” from, the interactive process necessary to prevail on a failure to accommodate claim. Further, the Court rejected her argument that the employer’s failure to accommodate was a “continuing violation,” and dismissed the remaining allegations since her accommodation requests had been made more than two years before she filed suit and were, therefore, untimely.
According to the Court’s opinion, the employee had
several mental health impairments which affected her ability to maintain
predictable attendance. Her job duties involved
travelling and working in the office. She requested and received approval for
intermittent FMLA leave. However, she
was placed on a last chance agreement after it was discovered that she had
claimed to be working (and was paid) for two days that she required unpaid FMLA
leave. The following year, she
exhausted her FMLA leave entitlement.
She then received and exhausted her lifetime of paid Short-term
disability leave. She then requested a
reasonable accommodation for schedule flexibility and telework and was provided
with the forms for her and her physician to complete. Believing that it was a waste of time based
on prior denial of accommodations, she did not complete or return the forms or
exercise any appeal rights. In July, she
called off sick without sufficient sick leave, in violation of her Last Chance
Agreement. She was asked for a written
explanation of her absence, but she refused to provide one. A pre-termination hearing was held in
November 2018, but she refused to attend and was fired the following month. She
filed suit two years later.
Although the claims were brought under the Rehabilitation
Act, the Court applied standards from the
ADA. She alleged that she was
fired for absences that would not have occurred if her disability had been
accommodated. This disability
discrimination claim required her to prove that she requested or proposed a reasonable
accommodation.
But even if [she] satisfied the first four
factors, the [employer] would not fail to provide the necessary accommodation
merely by declining to provide one automatically at [her] request. Instead, [her]
request for accommodation would mark the beginning of an “interactive process”
to “identify the precise limitations resulting from the disability and
potential reasonable accommodations that could overcome those limitations” that
“requires communication and good-faith exploration of possible accommodations.
. . .
Before the [employer] must accommodate, [she]
needs to first provide “a proper diagnosis of her disability and requested
specific accommodation.” . . . If she
instead “voluntarily withdraws from the interactive process based on [the employer’s]
request for verification, [she] fails to show that the [employer] denied her
requests for accommodations.” . . . And
if [she] fails “to provide requested medical documentation supporting an
accommodation,” that “precludes a failure to accommodate claim.” . . .
Here, when [she] requested an ADA
accommodation, the [employer’s] ADA coordinator asked her to fill out paperwork
to describe her requested accommodation and to show physician support for it.
But [she] refused. She claims that her FMLA and short-term disability forms
should suffice because they were “signed by her physician” and “precisely
describ[e] the nature of her disability.” . . .
These documents, however, only support the
FMLA leave and short-term disability leave [she] already received and
exhausted, showing no physician support for the ADA accommodations she
requested: “reasonable accommodation within [the] area of work schedule,
flexibility, and teleworking.” . . .
This deficiency is not some “bureaucratic technicalit[y],” . . ., or a bad-faith refusal by the [employer]
“to participate in the interactive process,” . . . . It is a critical failure by [the
plaintiff employee] to carry her burden of providing the [employer] “with
medical documentation supporting [her] accommodation[s’] necessity,” . . . And this failure amounts to a voluntary
withdrawal that precludes her claim that the [employer] failed to accommodate
her.
The Court refused to blame the employer for the breakdown
in the interactive process even though the plaintiff subjectively believed that
it was stacked against her. Even if she
though that 1/6 of the ADA committee was biased against her, she had a right to
appeal the denial of any accommodation. “The
[employer] did not cause a breakdown in the interactive process by establishing
a process that [she] simply did not like.”
Because she did not file suit until December 5, 2020, the
Court would only consider accommodation requests that she made within the prior
two years. However, all 13 of her
alleged requests for reasonable accommodation were made more than 26 months
earlier. “She knew the [employer] was
not accommodating her before she was terminated on December 3, 2018, so
everything in her failure-to-accommodate claim occurred outside the limitations
period.”
The Court refused to consider these alleged failures to
be a continuing violation of the Rehabilitation Act.
[E]ven if, as [she] alleges, “the
consequences of each additional denial are overlapping and cumulative,” . . . .
no activity persisted up to or past her
termination date. At that point, she already knew of her injury. So the alleged
failures to accommodate occurred outside the limitations period, and [her] federal
failure-to-accommodate claim is time-barred.
NOTICE: This summary is designed merely to inform and
alert you of recent legal developments. It does not constitute legal advice and
does not apply to any particular situation because different facts could lead
to different results. Information here can change or be amended without notice.
