Opinion ID: 799676
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 3

Heading: Walgreens's Alleged Failure to Engage in an Interactive Process Regarding Possible Accommodations

Text: Jones complements her essential functions arguments with allegations that the district court mistakenly concluded that Walgreens did not violate the ADA by failing to engage her in discussions regarding possible accommodations. This claim is grounded in 29 C.F.R. § 1630.2( o )(3), which prescribes: To determine [] appropriate reasonable accommodation[s] it may be necessary for [an employer] to initiate an informal, interactive process ... [to] identify the precise limitations resulting from the disability and potential reasonable accommodations that could overcome those limitations. Jones reasons that she had already requested reasonable accommodations before she was terminated i.e., by clarifying that she would delegate most physical obligations of store operations and had, by that time, performed her job for approximately a year. Jones argues that Walgreens unilaterally dissolved those accommodations when it terminated her in contravention of the interactive accommodation process envisioned by the ADA. We find that this ancillary claim similarly fails and hold that the district court correctly concluded that Walgreens was not under a legally-imposed obligation to go further than it did or engage in a more demanding interactive process to accommodate Jones. Our cases are clear that an employer's duty to accommodate does not arise unless (at a bare minimum) the employee is able to perform the essential functions of [her] job with an accommodation. DeCaro v. Hasbro, Inc., 580 F.3d 55, 63 (1st Cir. 2009). Faced with the panoply of tasks that Jones was barred from performing as of the date of her orthopedist's last correspondence with Walgreens, we do not believe a trier of fact could reasonably find that Jones could perform the essential functions of the Store Manager post, with or without accommodation. [6] And it is no answer under either federal or Massachusetts law for Jones to say, as she does, that she could work past her physical restrictions by delegating the considerable number of tasks that she could not accomplish. See Richardson, 594 F.3d at 81 (`[T]he law does not require an employer to accommodate a disability by foregoing an essential function of the position or by reallocating essential functions to make other workers' jobs more onerous.') (alterations in original) (quoting Mulloy, 460 F.3d at 153); Godfrey v. Globe Newspaper Co., 457 Mass. 113, 928 N.E.2d 327, 336 (2010) (Neither elimination of an essential duty from a position nor assignment to an unrelated position are `reasonable accommodations'....).