Opinion ID: 815098
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 3

Heading: “With or Without Reasonable Accommodation”

Text: When accommodation is necessary to enable a plaintiff to perform the essential functions of the position in question, it is the plaintiff’s burden to propose an accommodation that is “objectively reasonable.” Kleiber, 485 F.3d at 870. In defining what is reasonable, this court “has described the employee’s initial burden on this issue as showing ‘that the accommodation is reasonable in the sense both of efficacious and of proportional to costs.’” Monette v. Elec. Data Sys. Corp., 90 F.3d 1173, 1183 (6th Cir. 1996) (quoting Vande Zande v. State of Wisconsin Dep’t of Admin., 44 F.3d 538, 543 (7th Cir. 1995)). The employer can then “escape liability if he can carry the burden of proving that a disability accommodation reasonable for a normal employer would break him.” Vande Zande, 44 F.3d at 543. As stated by other circuits, the reasonable accommodation inquiry asks whether an accommodation “is reasonable in the run of cases, whereas the undue hardship inquiry focuses on the hardships imposed by the plaintiff’s preferred accommodation in the context of the particular [employer’s] operations.” Barth v. Gelb, 2 F.3d 1180, 1187 (D.C. Cir. 1993); accord Riel v. Elec. Data Sys. Corp., 99 F.3d 678, 683 (5th Cir. 1996). The reasonableness of a requested accommodation is generally a question of fact. Haschmann v. Time Warner Ent. Co., L.P., 151 F.3d 591, 601 (7th Cir. 1998). Keith argues the modifications to Oakland County’s policies, as outlined above, are objectively reasonable. There is evidence that such modifications would allow Keith to effectively communicate while on duty (i.e., the accommodation is efficacious) at little or no cost to Oakland County (i.e., the accommodation is proportional to costs). No. 11-2276 Keith v. Cnty. of Oakland Page 15 Oakland County raises the valid concern that other employees may have to shoulder extra duties because of Keith’s disability, such as following through with certain patron inquiries or first aid needs. But this does not, standing alone, entitle Oakland County to summary judgment. The ADA includes “job restructuring” among its enumeration of reasonable accommodations. 42 U.S.C. § 12111(9)(B). And although the ADA does not require the shifting of essential functions, the ADA “require[s] an employer to restructure the marginal functions of a job as a reasonable accommodation.” Holbrook v. City of Alpharetta, 911 F. Supp. 1524, 1542 (N.D. Ga. 1995); see also Benson v. Northwest Airlines, 62 F.3d 1108, 1112 (8th Cir. 1995) (stating that reasonable accommodation may “involv[e] reallocating the marginal functions of a job”). The district court’s reliance on Bratten v. SSI Servs., Inc., 185 F.3d 625, 632 (6th Cir. 1999), is misplaced. The plaintiff in Bratten was an automotive mechanic, an essential function of which was to perform lifting tasks. Id. at 632. Accommodating the plaintiff would have required other employees to perform as much as twenty percent of the plaintiff’s lifting duties, which the court sensibly indicated would be unreasonable. Id. at 632–33. In this case, however, Keith presented evidence that he can perform the essential communication duties of a lifeguard (e.g., detecting and rescuing distressed swimmers, enforcing pool rules, activating the EAP, performing CPR) through modifications that do not require shifting responsibility onto other lifeguards. See Benson, 62 F.3d at 1112. Further, there is no suggestion that the proposed shift in responsibilities would even approach the extent of reallocation in Bratten. Viewing the evidence in the light most favorable to Keith, a reasonable jury could find that the proposed modifications to Oakland County’s policies are objectively reasonable. Keith also presented evidence that providing an interpreter during staff meetings and further classroom instruction is objectively reasonable.2 His successful completion 2 Keith did not request an interpreter while on duty, and several experts testified that an interpreter is unnecessary to enable a deaf individual to perform the essential functions of a lifeguard. The suggestion by the district court and Oakland County that Keith would require an interpreter during his entire shift seems to be based on the opinions of Dr. Work and the representatives at Ellis, none of whom apparently have direct knowledge, education, or experience regarding the ability of deaf individuals to work as lifeguards. No. 11-2276 Keith v. Cnty. of Oakland Page 16 of Oakland County’s junior lifeguard and lifeguard training courses demonstrates that providing an ASL interpreter is efficacious during classroom instruction and similar settings, and considering that he would require an interpreter only on occasion and could function independently while on duty, the benefit of the interpreter would appear to be proportional to costs. Moreover, the ADA provides that “reasonable accommodation” may include “the provision of qualified readers or interpreters.” 42 U.S.C. § 12111(9). The inclusion of interpreters among the list of enumerated reasonable accommodations suggests to us that the provision of an interpreter will often be reasonable, particularly when the interpreter is needed only on occasion, in this instance, just for staff meetings and training. In fact, there are numerous cases in which courts have found that the provision of an interpreter during staff meetings and training sessions presented a question of fact for the jury on the issue of reasonableness. E.g., EEOC v. UPS Supply Chain Solutions, 620 F.3d 1103, 1111–13 (9th Cir. 2010) (question of fact remained regarding whether the employer failed to provide the deaf plaintiff a reasonable accommodation because it did not provide him with a sign language interpreter for certain staff meetings, disciplinary sessions, and training); EEOC v. Fed. Express Corp., 513 F.3d 360, 364–70 (4th Cir. 2008) (jury found by a preponderance of the evidence that FedEx violated the ADA by denying the deaf plaintiff’s requests for an ASL interpreter during meetings, training, and other events); EEOC v. Wal-Mart Stores, Inc., 187 F.3d 1241, 1246 (10th Cir. 1999) (the deaf plaintiff established a prima facie case where he showed that the employer refused to provide an interpreter at staff meetings and training sessions). In our view, the district court should not have relied on Steward v. Daimler Chrysler Corp., 533 F. Supp. 2d 717 (E.D. Mich 2008). Steward involved an assembly line worker who requested an assistant to accommodate her carpal tunnel syndrome. Id. at 720–22. The court held that such an accommodation was unreasonable because it was “equal to eliminating an essential function of the job.” Id. at 722. Here, however, Keith has not asked for an assistant while on duty, and providing an interpreter on a limited basis for staff meetings and further classroom instruction would not effectively eliminate No. 11-2276 Keith v. Cnty. of Oakland Page 17 an essential job function. Viewing the evidence in the light most favorable to Keith, a reasonable jury could find that providing an ASL interpreter during staff meetings and further classroom instruction is objectively reasonable. And because Oakland County has not argued, much less conclusively shown, that providing the accommodation would impose an undue hardship on the operation of its business, summary judgment was inappropriate. See 42 U.S.C. § 12111(10) (defining “undue hardship”).