Opinion ID: 198690
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 3

Heading: The Disability Discrimination Claim.

Text: 32 Finally, the appellant contends that New Balance failed to provide reasonable accommodations for his aural disability in violation of the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA), 42 U.S.C. §§ 12101-12213, and the MHRA. The district court rejected this contention because the appellant had not adduced evidence of discriminatory animus directed at his disability. See Higgins, 21 F. Supp. 2d at 72. 33 In terms, this ruling is insupportable. New Balance argued below that, absent any evidence that it harbored a disability-related animus against the appellant, no discriminatory discharge claim would lie under either the ADA or the MHRA. This rationale is sound as far as it goes -- it disposes handily of the appellant's discriminatory discharge claim (a claim that the district court quite properly rejected, see id. at 71 n.7, and one which the appellant no longer presses) -- but it does not go as far as the district court thought. When the court applied the same reasoning to block the appellant's failure-to-accommodate claim, it erred. 34 Under the ADA, a covered employer shall not discriminate against a qualified individual with a disability because of the disability of such individual in regard to job application procedures, the hiring, advancement, or discharge of employees, employee compensation, job training, and other terms, conditions, and privileges of employment. 42 U.S.C. § 12112(a). The pertinent provisions of the MHRA are to like effect. See Me. Rev. Stat. Ann. tit. 5, § 4572(1)(A). In order to facilitate inquiries into whether an employer's adverse employment decision was motivated by an employee's disability, courts generally use the McDonnell Douglas burden-shifting scheme. See, e.g., Dichner v. Liberty Travel, 141 F.3d 24, 29-30 (1st Cir. 1998); DiCentes, 719 A.2d at 514 n.10 (citing Maine Human Rights Comm'n v. City of Auburn, 408 A.2d 1253, 1261-63 (Me. 1979)). The third stage of this scheme, as we have interpreted it, requires that the plaintiff point to evidence, direct or circumstantial, of a particularized discriminatory animus. See, e.g., Dichner, 141 F.3d at 30; Smith v. Stratus Computer, Inc., 40 F.3d 11, 16 (1st Cir. 1994); Mesnick, 950 F.2d at 823-25. The appellant's discriminatory discharge claim -- a claim abandoned on appeal -- exemplifies this genre of cases. 35 But under the ADA, the term 'discriminate' includes . . . not making reasonable accommodations to the known physical or mental limitations of an otherwise qualified individual with a disability . . ., unless [the employer] can demonstrate that the accommodation would impose an undue hardship on the operation of the business of [the employer]. 42 U.S.C. § 12112(b)(5)(A). Maine law is almost identical. See Me. Rev. Stat. Ann. tit. 5, § 4553(2)(E). 5 Unlike other enumerated constructions of discriminate, this construction does not require that an employer's action be motivated by a discriminatory animus directed at the disability. Rather, any failure to provide reasonable accommodations for a disability is necessarily because of a disability -- the accommodations are only deemed reasonable (and, thus, required) if they are needed because of the disability -- and no proof of a particularized discriminatory animus is exigible. See Bultemeyer v. Fort Wayne Community Schs., 100 F.3d 1281, 1283-84 (7th Cir. 1996). Hence, an employer who knows of a disability yet fails to make reasonable accommodations violates the statute, no matter what its intent, unless it can show that the proposed accommodations would create undue hardship for its business. See 42 U.S.C. § 12112(b)(5)(A); Me. Rev. Stat. Ann. tit. 5, § 4553(2)(E); see also Aka v. Washington Hosp. Ctr., 156 F.3d 1284, 1300 (D.C. Cir. 1998) (en banc). It follows inexorably that the McDonnell Douglas scheme is inapposite in respect to such claims. See Pond v. Michelin N. Am., Inc., 183 F.3d 592, 597 n.5 (7th Cir. 1999); Bultemeyer, 100 F.3d at 1283-84; see generally Kevin W. Williams, The Reasonable Accommodation Difference: The Effect of Applying the Burden Shifting Frameworks Developed under Title VII in Disparate Treatment Cases to Claims Brought under Title I of the Americans with Disabilities Act, 18 Berkeley J. Emp. & Lab. L. 98, 151-59 (1997). 36 This distinction is in play here. To survive a motion for summary judgment on a failure-to-accommodate claim, a plaintiff ordinarily must furnish significantly probative evidence that he is a qualified individual with a disability within the meaning of the applicable statute; that he works (or worked) for an employer whom the ADA covers; that the employer, despite knowing of the employee's physical or mental limitations, did not reasonably accommodate those limitations; and that the employer's failure to do so affected the terms, conditions, or privileges of the plaintiff's employment. See Lyons v. Legal Aid Soc'y, 68 F.3d 1512, 1515 (2d Cir. 1995); Kralik v. Durbin, 130 F.3d 76, 78 (3d Cir. 1997). But cf. Gaines v. Runyon, 107 F.3d 1171, 1175 (6th Cir. 1997) (requiring that the accommodation be both reasonable and necessary for the plaintiff to perform the essential functions of his job). Here, the appellant's failure-to-accommodate claim satisfied these rather undemanding requirements: his affidavit stated, in substance, that he had a hearing impairment, that New Balance knew of it, and that management nonetheless failed to accommodate him either by supplying a fan or relocating a loudspeaker. 37 The rest is history. Despite the fact that the failure-to-accommodate claim was adequately presented, it was ignored by the defendant (whose motion for summary judgment did not discuss it) and misperceived by the district court (which applied the McDonnell Douglas burden-shifting framework to it). This induced the court to err by granting summary judgment on the ground that the record contained no evidence of a discriminatory animus toward the appellant's disability. 38 Of course, the trial court also wrote that New Balance had asked the appellant's co-workers to speak up when talking to him. See Higgins, 21 F. Supp. 2d at 72. This undisputed fact does not save the judgment. Although an employer's provision of a specific accommodation may provide relevant circumstantial evidence in respect to the reasonableness vel non of a different accommodation, see, e.g., Vande Zande v. Wisconsin Dep't of Admin., 44 F.3d 538, 546 (7th Cir. 1995), that accommodation will not always be enough to satisfy the employer's duty under the law, see Ralph v. Lucent Techs., Inc., 135 F.3d 166, 171-72 (1st Cir. 1998) (The duty to provide reasonable accommodation is a continuing one . . . and not exhausted by one effort.); see also Criado v. IBM Corp., 145 F.3d 437, 444-45 (1st Cir. 1998). Thus, New Balance's laudable directive fell short of what was needed to authorize summary judgment. 39 Because a remand is necessary on this aspect of the case, we add one further observation. While this appeal was pending, the Supreme Court decided a series of ADA cases, including Sutton v. United Air Lines, Inc., 119 S. Ct. 2139, 2149 (1999) (holding that courts should take corrective measures into account when deciding whether a plaintiff is substantially limited in any major life activity and thus disabled under the ADA). Sutton may well put the appellant's claim in an entirely different light (depending, inter alia, on the extent to which his hearing impairment is correctable by a hearing aid). Sutton, however, calls for a particularized, fact-specific analysis, see id., and at this point the record is not sufficiently developed to allow us to assess Sutton's impact on the case at hand. Accordingly, we deem it preferable to leave all Sutton-related issues, in the first instance, to the nisi prius court.