Source: http://www.williamgoren.com/blog/tag/illinois/
Timestamp: 2019-04-18 21:57:54+00:00

Document:
I was giving serious consideration to blogging on Stragapede v. City of Evanston, Illinois. After all, it isn’t very far from where I grew up, and I have all kinds of family connections to Northwestern University. So, I spent a lot of time in Evanston, including attending many a Northwestern University athletic event. However, Robin Shea just published an excellent write up of the case, and so I will leave it for her to analyze. It is definitely worth a read and can be found here. That left me with having to blog about something else. Ultimately, I decided to blog about a HUD conciliation agreement under the Fair Housing Act between an individual, the Fair Housing Advocates of Northern California and Schultz Investment Company et. al. Basically, the Respondents ran into problems with respect to emotional support animals/service dogs. Instead of taking it to trial, Respondents entered into a conciliation agreement. I thought it might be worthwhile to go over the terms. The blog entry is divided into terms of the conciliation agreement and takeaways. Since the structure of the blog entry is such and the length is so short, I’m figuring everyone is going to read the whole thing.
The agreement extends for three years.
A total of $71,000 was paid out to two different plaintiffs.
Within 90 days, the Respondents have to create and implement a reasonable accommodation and modification policy consistent with the Joint Statements of HUD and the Department of Justice on Reasonable Accommodations under the Fair Housing Act and Reasonable Modifications under the Fair Housing Act. That statement can be found here. What is curious is that the joint statement, from my read anyway, does not deal with emotional support animals and service dogs at all. Rather, it just deals with general obligations under the ADA and the Fair Housing Act. There is a document from the Housing and Urban Development Department talking about emotional support animal and service dogs that can be found here, and it is surprising that it doesn’t get a mention in the conciliation agreement.
The policy the defendant comes up with has to explicitly acknowledge and advise employees, tenants, and prospective tenants that an emotional support or companion animal qualifies as a reasonable accommodation under the Fair Housing Act.
Reasonable accommodation and reasonable modification requests must be consistently recorded and responded to in a timely manner.
Documentation of requests for reasonable accommodations or modifications will show whether medical verification was necessary or whether the disability was obvious and apparent as well as indicate when the defendant provided a written response to each request.
The policy also will say that reasonable accommodation and modification request can be made orally or in writing and that Respondents have to give appropriate consideration to requests even where the requester does not use the designated form.
The policy will make clear that verification of disability may come from a doctor or other medical professional such as a therapist, physician’s assistant, or nurse, or from a counselor, social worker, peer support group, a non-medical service agency, or a reliable third-party (emphasis added), who is in a position to know about the individual’s disability.
To request an accommodation or modification, the policy will make clear that an individual does not need to mention the Fair Housing Act or use the phrase “reasonable accommodation,” or “reasonable modification.” That is, MAGIC words are not required.
Leases must be redone within 90 days to reflect ¶ ¶ 1-8 above.
Within 90 calendar days, Respondents have to create and implement a form complying with the Fair Housing Act and make that form readily available to all applicants and current and future tenants. That form must be available at all leasing offices, included in application packets, and a copy provided to new tenants along with a copy of the executed lease.
Requests for reasonable accommodations and reasonable modification can be made verbally and the form is not required. However, there needs to be a written record of every request for reasonable accommodations or reasonable modifications.
Respondents agreed to track all requests for reasonable accommodations and/or reasonable modifications in an Excel spreadsheet and furnish that sheet to HUD on annual basis.
Receptionists, all front office staff, property managers, maintenance personnel, staff participating in making decisions on reasonable accommodations and/or reasonable modifications, and all other staff members interacting with tenants and/or applicants have to attend training sessions on fair housing lasting at least three hours at yearly intervals for two years. The first training session to occur within 90 days and the second one to occur by September 30, 2018. If the training is done by someone other than HUD, HUD will have to approve that training.
Respondents have to post HUD’s assistance animal poster at all leasing offices and at all trash/recycling areas. If the posters are removed or vandalized, Respondents have to promptly replace the posters with clean copies.
Respondents have to display the HUD fair housing poster in all leasing offices.
Within 30 days of the effective date of the agreement, Respondents have to inform all of their agents and employees responsible for compliance with the conciliation agreement the terms of the agreement and provide a person with a copy of the agreement.
Respondents agreed to submit to monitoring by HUD.
It is really curious why the HUD publication on service animals and assistance animal for people with disabilities in housing and HUD-funded programs does not get a mention. Even so, that is something you definitely want to look at.
Magic words are not required!!!!!!!!!!!
Reasonable accommodations and reasonable modifications under the Fair Housing Act encompass different meanings. Even so, for an attorney familiar with the ADA, that shouldn’t present a problem whatsoever since the term reasonable modifications under title III of the ADA, would encompass both Fair Housing Act terms.
While the Fair Housing Act does allow you to get documentation to determine whether the tenant has a disability, §I8 of this conciliation agreement casts a pretty broad net, much further than the ADA, as to the type of provider that can document the disability.
While Respondents did not admit liability, they did pay out $71,000 not to mention what they paid their attorneys in defending the case to this point.
I find it curious that the conciliation agreement mandates an Excel spreadsheet as one would think that there would be all kinds of possibilities that could be used with respect to dealing with the data associated with reasonable accommodation requests. Regardless, documentation is critical.
Did I say MAGIC words not required?
Undue Hardship in the Financial Sense: A Viable Defense?
This blog entry can be divided neatly into two parts. In the first part, I play a game of true false based upon the issues that arose in the recent case of Attiiogbe-Tay v. Southeast Rolling Hills LLC, which recently came down from the United States District Court of Minnesota. The second part explores the reasoning of the United States District Court of Minnesota in this case. Think of part one as the users guide and part two as the in-depth analysis. You are free to focus on either part one, part two, or even both depending upon your preference.
Let’s play a game of true-false.
1. The term “fundamental alteration” appears nowhere in title I of the ADA.
2. Proving undue hardship in the financial sense is impossible.
3. If a physician gives you restrictions on a particular job that you have and those restrictions are different from the essential functions of that job, that necessarily means that you can not perform the essential functions of the job without reasonable accommodation.
4. Transferring essential functions of a job to another employee is not required by the ADA.
5. Circumstances exist where it may not be necessary to engage in the interactive process and immediate termination can proceed.
6. Full return to work policies are still around but are deeply problematic.
7. If a person cannot do the essential functions of the job with or without reasonable accommodations at the end of FMLA leave, it is perfectly consistent with the FMLA to terminate that person though that may run you into trouble with the ADA.
5. True but incredibly risky.
1. The term fundamental alteration appears nowhere in title I of the ADA. Rather, that is a term that is used in title II and title III of the ADA. However, it would be a mistake to say that the term fundamental alteration cannot be found in disability discrimination employment law. Rather, fundamental alteration in disability employment law has long been a staple of the Rehabilitation Act cases alleging discrimination in employment in violation of the Rehabilitation Act (see for example School Board of Nassau County, Florida v. Arline, 480 U.S. 273, 288 n. 17). Since the ADA and the Rehabilitation Act are substantively the same, a strong argument can be made that fundamental alteration is also a part of title I when it comes to analyzing the concept of undue hardship.
2. Proving undue hardship in the financial sense is extremely difficult because under 42 U.S.C. § 12111(10)(a), whether an accommodation constitutes an undue hardship mean showing that it requires significant difficulty or expense. Such factors include considering the nature and cost of the accommodation and more importantly, the overall financial resources of the facility and the overall financial resources of the covered entity. 42 U.S.C. § 12111(10)(b)(ii),(iii) Thus, I have maintained for years that undue financial hardship is extremely difficult to show and that an entity would be much better off arguing undue hardship in the logistical sense (i.e. fundamental alteration), than it would be going with undue hardship in the financial sense.
3. Just because you have essential functions of the job and a person can no longer do those essential functions does not mean that they cannot do those essential functions with or without reasonable accommodations. You have to differentiate between assigning essential functions of the job to someone else, which is not required, v. exploring a reasonable accommodation that might work, which is required. Thus, you want to ask yourself is the only alternative to give an essential function of the job to someone else? If so, that is not required. However, if there are other means short of that for the person to accomplish the essential functions , then reasonable accommodations have to be put in place.
4. The ADA is full of cases, including this one, that say transferring essential functions of the job is not required by the ADA.
5. We have seen already that some circumstances may occur when an entity might terminate someone without engaging in the interactive process and escape liability. It’s an incredibly risky maneuver as the ADA demands that an entity engage in the interactive process once they are informed that a person with a disability is seeking reasonable accommodations, and in some Circuits, failure to engage in the interactive process is an independent cause of action. It is also possible, as the dissent makes clear in the case reference by the blog entry in this paragraph, that a plaintiff might argue that the request for extended leave is nothing more than a request to initiate the reasonable accommodation interactive process.
6. See my blog entry of December 18, 2011.
7. See this blog entry (doing this might be evidence of a lack of good faith).
The United States District Court for the District of Minnesota has made quite a splash with a decision that came down on November 7, 2013. Two separate bloggers, workplace safety and health law blog put out by Fisher Phillips and one in my blogroll (Ohio employers blog), have written on this case, and I thought it would be useful to offer my own perspective.
In this case, Attiogbe-Tay v. Southeast Rolling Hills LLC, 2013 WL 5954685 (D. Minn. November 7, 2013), the plaintiff was a licensed practical nurse employed at a senior living facility and worked the overnight shift where she was responsible for caring for 160 assisted living patients. During her employment, she began experiencing severe knee pain due to degenerative joint disease and arthritis, and on several occasions her employer questioned her about her knees asking her if she was able to complete her assigned duties. Plaintiff elected to have knee replacement surgery and was granted 12 weeks of family medical leave act leave. The employer informed her when her FMLA leave would expire and that she needed to return to work without restrictions by that date. On that date, the plaintiff returned to work and provided a note from her physician saying that she could not kneel, squat or lift more than 50 pounds, but that she was otherwise cleared to return to work. The restrictions were to be in place for six weeks.
Some other points are worth noting. First, the employee handbook said that if medical restrictions existed at the end of FMLA leave, the employer was to review and discuss the situation with the employee and determine whether the work restrictions could be reasonably accommodated. The employer never initiated a discussion of potential reasonable accommodations with the plaintiff instead terminating her and inviting her to reapply once the temporary restrictions were lifted. Second, the job description said that she was required to occasionally (between one and 33% of an eight hour shift), kneel, squat and lift up to 100 pounds and she was the only licensed practical nurse schedule for the overnight shift. Finally, the employer had spent $8000 in additional staffing costs in addition to experiencing an uneven level of care to its residents and fatigue to the other licensed practical nurses while she was on family medical leave act leave.
1. The court referred to EEOC regulations as to when a function is essential. Those regulations say that a function is essential when: the position exists to perform that function; the function may only be performed by a limited number of employees; or it requires special expertise. 29 C.F.R. § 1630.2(n)(2). The employer had a document referring to the plaintiff’s position and signed by her when she began her employment stating that the employer expected her to kneel, squat, and lift up to 100 pounds were between 1% and 33% of each shift. Further, those physical tasks were inherently connected to attending to patients and failing to carry out those tasks could have dire consequences. Therefore, the plaintiff was unable to perform the essential functions of the job without reasonable accommodations.
Response: As mentioned in part one, to my mind, there is a leap of logic here. While it is true that even occasional tasks can be essential functions of the job and that it is also true that she could not do the required lifting, that does not necessarily mean that there was no reasonable accommodation whatsoever (short of transferring an essential job duty to someone else), that could be employed. For example, was there a machine available that could lift these patients? We will never know because they never explored this. It would be interesting to see what a phone call to the job accommodation network (see link in my ADA resources section), would come up with.
2. The ADA does not require an employer to reallocate or eliminate an essential function of the job to accommodate a disabled employee.
3. An undue hardship existed because while the plaintiff was on FMLA leave the employer incurred $8000 in additional staffing costs, uneven level of care to its residents, and fatigue to the other licensed practical nurses while dealing with a relatively small staff size.
Response: As mentioned in part one, this is a lot more complicated than it looks. It is absolutely true that fundamental alteration does not appear in title I of the ADA. It is also true that employment cases dealing with the Rehabilitation Act have used that term for years. The EEOC would tell you that there are two kinds of undue hardship. The first is financial and the second is logistical. The court seem to be combining the two here. With respect to financial, it is hard to believe that $8000 for a senior living facility with hundreds of patients would be an undue financial hardship if, per the EEOC regulations, the overall financial resources of the facility and the overall financial resources of the covered entity were factored in. Second, the argument may be stronger with respect to undue hardship in the logistical sense (fundamental alteration), because of the uneven level of care to the residents and the fatigue to the other licensed practical nurses that resulted while the plaintiff was on leave.
4. The court noted in a footnote that to pursue a claim under the theory that failing to participate in the interactive process violated the ADA, the plaintiff has to show that the employee could have been reasonably accommodated but for the employer’s lack of good faith. The court said that no reasonable accommodations were available; therefore, any claim premised on failure to participate in the interactive process failed.
Response: Couple of things here. First, as we have mentioned elsewhere, it depends upon the circuit as to whether failure to engage in the interactive process is a separate cause of action under the ADA. Second, as mentioned above, before we could say that no reasonable accommodation possibly existed, I would certainly want to know what the job accommodation network might say.
Finally, two other things bear noting. First, it is too bad that the plaintiff was not in the state of Illinois because Illinois is one of those states that has a very strong tendency for finding a contract with respect to an employee handbook (see Duldulao v. St. Mary of Nazareth Hospital Center, 115 Ill. 2d 482 (1987)). Clearly, it is undisputed, that the employer did not follow its own employee handbook with respect to exploring reasonable accommodations once the FMLA leave was used up. Accordingly, in some jurisdictions, the plaintiff here could have a breach of contract claim. Second, this court has now opened up litigation as to what an undue financial hardship might mean. In this situation, they say that $8000 when combined with certain other factors will work. It remains to be seen what other dollars might work. The only disadvantage I see to undue financial hardship being used by the defense is that it would open up the defense to having to reveal its entire financial situation, which they may not want to do. The way around that of course is to not argue undue financial hardship at all, but rather focus on undue logistical hardship (i.e. fundamental alteration).
In law school, we learn that the federal system is a notice pleading jurisdiction. The idea behind notice pleading is that you make a general statement as to what the case is about if you are a plaintiff and then the rest is up to discovery. Once discovery is done you can go with the motion for summary judgment if you are on the defense side. At the state level, the approach varies from state to state. Some states are much more fact-based while other states are very general and leave it up to discovery. Some states, such as Illinois, fall in between. One of the things that I am seeing quite a bit, particularly with prisoners, but sometimes with individual plaintiffs as well, is that they are filing pro se complaints. That means, they are filing complaints without a lawyer. That is generally not to be recommended. Also, even lawyers have to worry about how to get to first base so to speak. Thus, this blog entry will explore what must be alleged to survive a motion to dismiss. Of course, my blog is devoted to the ADA, but the reader may find this information helpful with respect to federal cases in general.
To say that the federal system is a notice pleading situation, is no longer entirely accurate thanks to two different cases, Ashcroft v. Iqbal, 129 S. Ct. 1937 (2009), and Bell Atlantic Corporation v. Twombly, 550 U.S. 544 (2007). In those cases, the United States Supreme Court said that a simple recital of the elements of a cause of action supported by making conclusory statements is not going to be sufficient to survive a motion to dismiss. Iqbal 129 S. Ct. at 1949-1950. That is, while legal conclusions can provide the framework of the complaint, they have to be supported by factual allegations that plausibly give rise to an entitlement to relief. Id. at 1950. Plausibility refers to a complainant pleading enough factual content that allows the court to draw a reasonable inference that the defendant is liable for the misconduct. Id. at 1949.
So what does this all mean? It means that one should not take the notice pleading analysis of the federal court literally. That is, a better approach might be to adopt a hybrid system, such as the one in Illinois. Illinois uses a hybrid system. That is, it is not a notice pleading jurisdiction, but on the other hand it is not a pure factual jurisdiction in its practice either. Rather, a complainant has to give enough facts to put the defendant on notice as to what the claim is. The language you might see in an Illinois case is that a plaintiff is required to allege facts stating the elements of the cause of action, and unsupported legal conclusions and factual conclusions are insufficient and will be disregarded. People ex rel. Madigan v. Tang 346 Ill. App. 3d 277, 283 (first district 2004). There isn’t much difference between a standard such as this and the standard called for by Iqbal, which requires that a plaintiff’s complaint has to include sufficient facts of each element to support a reasonable inference that he or she is entitled to relief. See Wells v. West Georgia technical College 2012 WL 3150819, *3 (N.D. Georgia August 2, 2012).
What it all comes down to is this, and the Wells case is an excellent road map for how it works, is that you want to take each element of the claim and then come up with specific facts supporting each element of the claim. For example, for a person to have an actual disability under the Americans with Disabilities Act, you would need a physical or mental impairment that substantially limits a major life activity. Therefore, you would want to allege facts showing a physical or mental impairment. You would also want to allege facts showing that a substantial limitation on a major life activity (recognizing that substantial limitation post ADAAA is not the same as substantial limitation prior to the ADAAA), exists. If it is a case involving reasonable accommodations, you’re also going to have to allege facts to show that the person is a qualified person with a disability. That is, you would need to allege facts to show that the person can do the essential functions of the job with or without reasonable accommodations. In short, the methodology is pretty simple. As a plaintiff, what you need to do, is determine what are the elements of the cause of action and then allege the facts satisfying each element. Stay away from general conclusions and stick to specific facts. On the defense side, when you receive the complaint, figure out what are the elements of each of the causes of action that the plaintiff is alleging. If the plaintiff is not alleging specific facts that satisfy each element, then your chances for prevailing on a motion to dismiss increase quite substantially.
Of course, I would be remiss if I didn’t point out that this blog entry, as are all my blog entries, general information and are not for purposes of giving specific legal advice. For specific legal advice and for how a complaint should actually be structured, that is for the lawyer to decide.

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