Opinion ID: 199137
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 4

Heading: Remaining Sufficiency of the Evidence Arguments

Text: 50 Defendant goes still further in encouraging us to overturn the jury's verdict in this case, arguing that none of the alleged conduct was shown at trial to be discriminatory. This argument also misses the mark. 51 As we have recognized before, 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]. Higgins v. New Balance Athletic Shoe, Inc., 194 F.3d 252, 264 (1st Cir. 1999) (quoting 42 U.S.C. 12112(b)(5)(A)) (some quotation marks omitted). 52 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). 53 Id. Such failure to accommodate, of course, is precisely what the jury determined occurred in this case, and just a few examples illustrate why that conclusion is well founded in the evidence. 54 For instance, defendant contends that requiring plaintiff to cover the cash register during busy times was not shown to be discriminatory, particularly because other employees were also asked to cover the register during busy times. Defendant, of course, misses the point entirely. For plaintiff to cover the cash register entailed a laborious and, according to her, humiliating process in which she would have to install a specially designed stool and move herself from her wheelchair to the stool--all in a situation which, by defendant's own characterization, must be presumed to have included numerous observers, many of whom were likely to be impatient. Under these circumstances, of which defendant was plainly aware, it was not enough to treat plaintiff like other employees. In fact, to do so was an unlawful failure to accommodate her disability in violation of the ADA. 55 Even more egregious is the defendant's argument that it did not act unlawfully when it ordered plaintiff not to park in the store's handicapped parking spaces. In defense of its actions, Pueblo states in its brief that [a]t that time, as Ms. Marcano states, she was asked to park in the same area as all other employees, away from the Store. In essence, she was treated as all other employees. Of course, here again, it is not sufficient to treat plaintiff as all other employees. Plaintiff, due to her disability, must use parking spaces specially set aside for handicapped individuals, because those parking spaces are not only closer to the store but are also designed to accommodate her transfer from vehicle to wheelchair. Her use of such spaces is not a matter of preference or convenience, but a matter of practicality--she simply cannot function in a crowded parking space. For defendant to posit that treating her like everyone else--in other words, like she had no disability--is practically a concession of its failure to accommodate her. 56 Based on the foregoing, we have no trouble in rejecting this aspect of defendant's sufficiency of the evidence argument.