Opinion ID: 757637
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 3

Heading: Excel's Physical Fitness Job Qualification

Text: 49 The collective bargaining agreement between Excel and the Union contains the following provision: 50 Layoff, recall and promotion will be based on length of service within a department or the plant, provided the qualifications, ability to perform the work and physical fitness are equal among employees eligible for consideration. 51 CBA, Art. XIII, § 1(B) (emphasis added). 52 The plaintiffs assert that policies concerning employment decisions that tend to screen out disabled persons violate the ADA unless the selection criteria are shown to be job-related. 53 According to the plaintiffs, physical ability is legitimately part of the qualifications and ability to perform requirements of the provision but is not an additional criterion. Because Excel's policy requires physical fitness, it rejects an individualized assessment of a disabled employee's ability to perform a job and screens out those with a disability. Such a policy constitutes a per se violation of the ADA because it requires a disabled person to show that, in addition to being qualified and able to perform a given job, he or she is also at least as physically fit as all the other applicants. 54 Excel responds that there is nothing in the record to show that any employee ever was laid off, denied recall or denied a promotion in deference to another employee based on the relative degree to which employees were deemed to possess physical fitness. Without such evidence, Excel claims, the district court could not have found that the words in the labor contract signified a policy which violated the ADA. Moreover, it asserts, the clause requires an individualized assessment of a candidate's ability to perform, and that assessment must include his physical capabilities. Because there is no evidence that the physical fitness factor was used to disqualify disabled employees, Excel contends that reversal of the judgment is not warranted. 55 The ADA regulations expressly forbid an employer 56 to use qualification standards, employment tests or other selection criteria that screen out or tend to screen out ... a class of individuals with disabilities, on the basis of disability, unless the standard, test or other selection criteria, as used by the covered entity, is shown to be job-related for the position in question and is consistent with business necessity. 57 29 C.F.R. § 1630.10. The purpose of this provision is to ensure that individuals with disabilities are not excluded from job opportunities unless they are actually unable to do the job. 29 C.F.R. Pt. 1630, App. § 1630.10. Section 1(B) of Article XIII of the CBA states that seniority is the basis for deciding layoff, recall and promotion rights--provided that three selection criteria are equal among employees eligible for consideration. The three are qualifications, ability to perform the work, and physical fitness. We do not question that employees eligible for consideration in layoffs, recalls and promotions must have the proper qualifications and the ability to perform the work. Those selection criteria are job-related to any position. However, the third criterion, physical fitness, is job-related only to the extent of the employee's ability to perform the work. See 29 C.F.R. Pt. 1630, App. § 1630.10 (The purpose ... is to ensure that there is a fit between job criteria and an applicant's (or employee's) actual ability to do the job.). In our view, the separate criterion of physical fitness--unrelated to job requirements--as a qualification standard for promotions, layoffs and recalls tends to screen out, whether intentionally or unintentionally, disabled employees. We do not believe it should be a separate general qualification standard for all of the varied jobs at Excel. Those positions that require physical fitness necessarily incorporate the criterion in their performance ability criterion. Even when physical fitness is a selection criterion that is related to an essential function of the job, however, it may not be used to exclude an individual with a disability if that individual could satisfy the criteri[on] with the provision of a reasonable accommodation. 29 C.F.R. Pt. 1630, App. § 1630.10 (emphasis added). To the extent physical fitness is a separate criterion, therefore, it has the capacity to screen out disabled employees and therefore the possibility of violating the ADA's requirement of an individualized assessment of an employee's capabilities. See 29 C.F.R. § 1630.7 (It is unlawful for a covered entity to use standards, criteria, or methods of administration, which are not job-related and consistent with business necessity, and: (a) That have the effect of discriminating on the basis of disability); Weigel v. Target Stores, 122 F.3d 461, 466 (7th Cir.1997) (stating that the determination of whether one qualifies as a qualified individual with a disability necessarily involves an individualized assessment of the individual and the relevant position); see also Heise v. Genuine Parts Co., 900 F.Supp. 1137, 1154 & n. 10 (D.Minn.1995) (holding that a must be cured or 100% healed policy is a per se violation of the ADA because the policy does not allow a case-by-case assessment of an individual's ability to perform essential functions of the individual's job, with or without accommodation); Hutchinson v. United Parcel Serv., Inc., 883 F.Supp. 379 (N.D.Iowa 1995) (same). 58 An independent physical fitness criterion is most troubling. In our view, this clause, when read in the context of the entire section of the collective bargaining agreement, is susceptible of more than one reading. We cannot be certain, in the absence of evidence in the record, that the parties to this collective bargaining agreement have interpreted that phrase as imposing an independent physical fitness criterion on the class members. Further examination of this issue in the district court is required.