Earlier this month, the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals affirmed an employer’s summary judgment on an ADA claim on the grounds that the requested accommodation was unreasonable on its face, meaning that the employer did not have to even engage in the interactive process or grant the requested accommodation. Bowles v. SSRG II, LLC, No. 25-5329 (6th Cir. 12-17-25). The newly-hired fast-casual restaurant cashier had requested the right to sit for five minutes every time that she had to stand for 10 minutes because of arthritis in her knees. The undisputed facts showed that the essential functions of the job required multi-tasking and spending the majority of time standing and walking. There were no “standalone register-only” positions.
According to the Court’s opinion, the plaintiff was hired
for a cashier position. This required
her to take orders for dine-in and carry-out, fill drink orders, stocking the drink
station and refrigeration station, expediting food orders, delivering items to
eat-in customers, clean tables, vacuum, etc. in a fast-paced environment. “Those
features made multitasking essential.” During
the application process, she had disclosed her disability and that she would
need to periodically sit if required to stand for long periods of time and was
hired anyway.
During her orientation, the plaintiff disclosed that she
would need to sit when needed or to sit and work. HR delayed her start date
pending medical documentation, which initially indicated only that she would
need a chair because of her arthritis.
HR then requested to know how long she could stand and how often she
would need to sit, etc. The plaintiff
responded that she could only stand for 10 minutes at a time and then would need
to sit for 5 minutes. HR responded that
there were no sitting positions.
The Court rejected the employee’s failure to accommodate
claim for failing to specify a reasonable accommodation:
[Her] claim stumbles from the
start, as she did not satisfy her initial burden of showing that her proposed
accommodation—being able to sit for five minutes after every ten minutes of
standing—is objectively reasonable, accounting for the essential requirements
of the cashier/service-team member role . . . .
. . .
Juxtapose these critical job duties
with what [she] requested: the ability to sit in one location for a duration of
five minutes—presumably in front a cash register—after standing for ten. [Her]
request would necessarily change the nature of the cashier/service-team member
position. For a third of her shift, [her] job would be isolated to manning the
cash register, regardless of whether there was a customer waiting at the
register. And during those periods, [she] would be unable to tackle numerous
duties, from greeting a customer at the door to rushing an order out to a
hungry patron to cleaning up a spill at the drink station, just to name a few,
any of which could occur at a moment’s notice in the setting of a fast-casual
restaurant. This collection of duties is why [the employer] requires both
multitasking and mobility from its team members.
The plaintiff attempted to argue that she was only hired to
be a cashier and not to multi-task.
The problem for [the plaintiff] is
that there is no evidence that she was hired for a standalone register-only
position. In fact, no such position existed at the restaurant. The only
position identified in the record is the cashier/service-team member role. And
its written job description and the deposition testimony presented at summary
judgment show that the role was far more than a limited, register-centric job.
True, both [the restaurant’s] employees as well as [the plaintiff] referred to
the position colloquially as the “cashier” role. But the position’s name,
either formal or informal, is far less meaningful than its critical functions.
As we engage in the “highly fact specific” inquiry into what is an essential
function, . . .a job title alone tells
us very little, . . .
The Court also rejected her argument that her earlier
requests to sit periodically should have been given more weight than her last,
more specific request. It distinguished
other cashier cases where the plaintiff’s station was stationery, rather than
fluid.
. . . requiring a duration of five minutes of
sitting after standing for ten is what makes [her] request facially
unreasonable. Meeting those terms would alter essential functions of the
cashier/service-team member position while foisting added duties on co-workers
when [she] manned the cash register. Perhaps, as [she] emphasizes, she could
perform some tasks during her time standing. But that misses the point. The
nature of the job—working in the front of the house at a fast-casual
restaurant— necessarily means that a given task could crop up at any time. In
one minute, the kitchen might have prepared a food order to run out to a
customer. The next, a customer might finish her meal, leaving a messy table
behind. And a minute later, the beverage station or refrigerator may need
restocking. Had [the employer] granted [her] accommodation, all of those tasks
would go unattended by [her] while she sat at the cash register, despite her
position’s essential requirements and the restaurant’s needs.
The Court also refused to assign the “reasonableness” of the
request to a jury determination:
While there undoubtedly are cases
where disputes of fact arise over what a job entails and whether an
accommodation would interfere with core functions of that job, in the end,
disputes over both issues involve a mixed question of law and fact. . . . And it is appropriate for us to resolve these
mixed questions at summary judgment when there are few evidentiary disputes
over the material facts. . . . That is
the case here. There is no evidentiary dispute as to the essential functions of
the cashier/service-team member position. Nor is there a dispute over the
nature of [her] proposed accommodation. As a result, we follow the well-trodden
path of determining as a matter of law whether [her] proposed accommodation is
a facially reasonable one.
The Court also rejected her allegation that the employer
failed to engage in the interactive process.
Rather than address the employer’s request for medical information, it
concluded that no interaction was required when the requested accommodation was
unreasonable on its face:
a viable interactive-process claim
presupposes the existence of a reasonable accommodation. And with [her] having
presented a facially unreasonable request to [the employer], her remaining
claim necessarily fails.
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.
Readers should not act upon this information without legal advice. If you have
any questions about anything you have read, you should consult with or retain
an employment attorney.
