Opinion ID: 2759857
Heading Depth: 5
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: Driving

Text: LHC contends that driving is an essential function of both positions. Courts owe deference to an employer’s position description: “consideration shall be given to the employer’s judgment as to what functions of a job are essential, and if an employer has prepared a written description before advertising or interviewing applicants for the job, this description shall be considered evidence of the essential functions of the job.” 42 U.S.C. § 12111(8). But this deference is not absolute: The inquiry into whether a particular function is essential initially focuses on whether the employer actually requires employees in the position to perform the functions that the employer asserts are essential. For example, an employer may state that typing is an essential function of a position. If, in fact, the employer has never required any employee in that particular position to type, this will be evidence that typing is not actually an essential function of the position. Interpretive Guidance on Title I of the Americans With Disabilities Act, 29 C.F.R. pt. 1630, app. § 1630.2(n) (emphasis added). Fact-finders must determine whether a function is “essential” on a case-by-case basis. Id. LHC requires that Team Leaders and Field Nurses have a “[c]urrent Driver’s License and vehicle insurance, and access to a dependable vehicle.” The position descriptions also emphasize that “[s]ignificant portions (more than 50%) of daily assignments require travel to client/resident/patient locations or other work sites, via car or public transportation.” Sones estimated that as a Field Nurse she spent “probably a couple hours” of her eight-hour day driving to patient homes. However, contrary to the written position description, Team Leaders in practice drove far less frequently than did Field Nurses. Statements in Guchereau’s deposition qualify the driving requirement in the position description: many Team Leader tasks were performed in the branch office. 11 Case: 13-60703 Document: 00512866071 Page: 12 Date Filed: 12/11/2014 No. 13-60703 Both LHC’s position description and Sones’s testimony confirm that Field Nurses are expected to spend large portions of their day driving. Therefore, the district court correctly concluded that as a matter of law driving is an essential function of that job. But because the record contains evidence that traveling was not as prominent a part of a Team Leader’s duties as the position description suggests, taking all reasonable inferences in favor of the EEOC, there is a genuine dispute of material fact as to whether driving was an essential function of that position. LHC next contends that it would have been impossible to reasonably accommodate Sones’s inability to drive in either role. The ADA requires employers to make “[m]odifications or adjustments to the work environment, or to the manner or circumstances under which the position held or desired is customarily performed, that enable a qualified individual with a disability to perform the essential functions of that position . . . .” 29 C.F.R. § 1630.2(o)(1)(ii). However, “[t]he ADA does not require an employer to relieve an employee of any essential functions of his or her job, modify those duties, reassign existing employees to perform those jobs, or hire new employees to do so.” Burch v. City of Nacogdoches, 174 F.3d 615, 621 (5th Cir. 1999) (holding employer was not required to accommodate firefighter who could not fight fires); see also Barber v. Nabors Drilling U.S.A., Inc., 130 F.3d 702, 709 (5th Cir. 1997) (“We cannot say that [an employee] can perform the essential functions of the job with reasonable accommodation, if the only successful accommodation is for [the employee] not to perform those essential functions.”). On the summary-judgment record, we cannot say that a reasonable accommodation would have permitted Sones to complete an essential function that occupied “a couple hours” of a Field Nurse’s typical day. The EEOC argues that reasonable accommodations were available: Guchereau permitted Sones to receive rides to six patient calls from her mother on one occasion and 12 Case: 13-60703 Document: 00512866071 Page: 13 Date Filed: 12/11/2014 No. 13-60703 Picayune may have had a handful of public transportation options, including van services. 4 But the EEOC has not offered prima facie evidence that any of these potential accommodations was a feasible daily solution. Because driving is such a central part of the Field Nurse position, the district court properly concluded that LHC could not have reasonably accommodated Sones’s restriction: Sones was not qualified to work as a Field Nurse. We reach a different conclusion regarding the Team Leader position. Even if driving were an essential function of a Team Leader, Sones might have carried out the job with reasonable accommodation. Compare Molina v. DSI Renal, Inc., 840 F. Supp. 2d 984, 1003 (W.D. Tex. 2012) (interpreting analogous Texas statute and denying summary judgment when record contained no evidence that providing the requested accommodation would cause employer “undue hardship” and when the accommodation “would cause little to no change in the current working arrangements and would not require scheduling additional employees”), with Hammond v. Jacob Field Servs., 499 F. App’x 377, 382–38 (5th Cir. 2012) (per curiam) (affirming summary judgment when the only available accommodation was to reassign employee tasks all typically distributed among line operators), and Toronka v. Cont’l Airlines, Inc., 411 F. App’x 719, 725 (5th Cir. 2011) (affirming summary judgment when the only reasonable accommodation for an employee’s inability to drive was to assign him to non-existent desk-based position). Guchereau’s deposition testimony suggests that a taxi or van service might have enabled a Team Leader to adequately discharge her duties, and LHC’s position description expressly 4 In a footnote, LHC raised the possible concern that permitting Sones to use public transportation would cause LHC to violate the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act, 48 U.S.C. § 1985 (HIPAA). The parties mentioned this briefly at oral argument. Because on appeal LHC raised the HIPAA argument only in a footnote, and because the summary-judgment record contains no undisputed facts to support it, we decline to consider the argument here. 13 Case: 13-60703 Document: 00512866071 Page: 14 Date Filed: 12/11/2014 No. 13-60703 states that travel can be accomplished “via car or public transportation.” This evidence raises a genuine dispute as to whether Sones’s proposed accommodations were the kind of “job restructuring” the ADA envisions. See 42 U.S.C. § 12111(9)(B). Finally, LHC failed to engage in the ADA-mandated process to consider reasonable accommodations. “Under the ADA, once the employee presents a request for an accommodation, the employer is required to engage in [an] interactive process so that together they can determine what reasonable accommodations might be available.” Chevron Phillips, 570 F.3d at 622. Given the relative infrequency with which she would have been required to drive, Sones’s proposed solutions were not so unreasonable that they absolved LHC of its statutory duty to at least discuss accommodation. Therefore, while the district court properly concluded that the EEOC did not meet its prima facie summary-judgment burden to show Sones was qualified to serve as a Field Nurse, it erred in reaching the same conclusion regarding the Team Leader position. The disputed question of which position Sones actually held is material, precluding summary judgment on qualification.