Opinion ID: 3011078
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 3

Heading: Was Taylor Regarded as Disabled?

Text: A person is regarded as having a disability if the person: (1) Has a physical or mental impairment that does not substantially limit major life activities but is treated by the covered entity as constituting such limitation; (2) Has a physical or mental impairment that substantially limits major life activities only as a result of the attitudes of others toward such impairment; or (3) Has [no such impairment] but is treated by a covered entity as having a substantially limiting impairment. 29 C.F.R. S 1630.2(l) (1996). Taylor argues that Pathmark regarded him as disabled by virtue of the ADA Committee's determination that he was too impaired to take any Pathmark job, with or without accommodation. The gravamen of Taylor's claim is that Pathmark perceived Taylor as disabled based on a mistaken interpretation of his medical records, specifically Dr. Moore's October 1995 physical capacity evaluation, wherein _________________________________________________________________ 3. See supra note 1. The most direct evidence on this point comes from Dr. Moore's note to Cynthia Jackson, who apparently was in charge of authorizing Taylor's medical expenses for Pathmark's insurer. Dr. Moore requested that Taylor be authorized to visit a podiatrist for his ankle pain and wrote, Hopefully, only conservative measures will be needed such as a brace or an orthotic. Taylor has identified no further evidence that such a visit was authorized or what came from it, and he testified that his need for an air cast was only occasional. Under these circumstances, we conclude that no material issue of fact exists about his medical need for an assistive device to stand for shorter periods. 11 the doctor checked the box marked temporary and the Committee responded with a letter stating We have been advised your restrictions are permanent. The October 1995 evaluation, which occurred after Taylor temporarily aggravated his ankle, described severe limitations on many important activities such as lifting and walking, limits that were far greater than those imposed by Taylor's permanent ankle impairment. A reasonable jury could therefore conclude that Pathmark erroneously regarded him as disabled. As Taylor notes, the statement in Pathmark's May 1996 letter that he was unable to perform any Pathmark job, even with accommodation, suggests a perception of limits that would likely constitute substantial limitation on many major life activities. This is not a case where Pathmark stated that he was unable to perform a particular job; it appears to have considered him incapable of performing a wide range of jobs, indeed, any jobs that required significant standing, walking, lifting, or moving about (i.e., most jobs in a supermarket). Several cases support our conclusion that, in general, an employer's perception that an employee cannot perform a wide range of jobs suffices to make out a regarded as claim. In Dipol v. New York City Transit Authority, 999 F. Supp. 309, 314 (E.D.N.Y. 1998), the court found that the plaintiff had proved a regarded as claim when, after receiving information from the plaintiff's doctor, the employer immediately placed the plaintiff on no-work status, excluding him from all jobs. In Coleman v. Keebler Co., 997 F. Supp. 1102, 1114 (N.D. Ind. 1998), the court held that evidence that the defendant concluded that the plaintiff could not perform any available jobs in a production plant created a material issue of fact on a regarded as claim. More generally, if an impairment at a certain level of severity would constitute a disability, then it follows that an employer who perceives an employee as having such an impairment perceives the employee as disabled. Cf. 29 C.F.R. pt. 1630 App., S 1630.2(j) (An individual who has a bad back that prevents the individual from performing any heavy labor job would be substantially limited in the major life activity of working because the individual's impairment eliminates his or her ability to perform a class of jobs.). 12 The District Court, however, rejected Taylor's regarded as claim. The court reasoned: The thrust of Plaintiff's claim . . . is based on Defendant's failure to accommodate Plaintiff's physical impairment. Plaintiff asserts that based on Dr. Gelman's April 7th note, which stated that Plaintiff could work without restrictions, Defendant demanded on April 29, 1994 that Plaintiff perform the cashier's job. Plaintiff contends that he could not perform the cashier's job as requested because he was substantially limited in a major life activity and therefore disabled . . . . On the other hand, Plaintiff argues that he was wrongfully regarded as disabled by his employer with respect to him being employed in the frozen food manager's job, which Plaintiff asserts he could have done without any accommodation by the Defendant. . . . Essentially, the Plaintiff is asking the Defendant to treat him as disabled under the ADA if he is assigned to a job other than frozen food manager. In sum, when Plaintiff was initially injured, he provided his medical restrictions to the Defendant. Plaintiff worked for a period of fifteen months asserting these restrictions and Defendant accommodated him. Subsequently, when Defendant learned, from a doctor's note, that Plaintiff was purportedly no longer disabled, Defendant regarded Plaintiff as able, and requested that Plaintiff perform a job affording no accommodation for his impairment. Plaintiff then asserted that he was disabled. Plaintiff now claims that he was not disabled and should not have been regarded as such by the Defendant in the context of Plaintiff 's desire to be assigned as a frozen food manager. Plaintiff proposes an apparently impossible situation for an employer. On the one hand, an employer must acknowledge the medical restrictions needed by an employee, while on the other hand it must ignore those same medical restrictions when the employee believes the restrictions might affect his assignment to a desired position. 13 Slip op. at 14 (citations omitted). We will first consider the District Court's reasoning about the conflicts between Taylor's two claims and the time frame of his regarded as claim, and then turn to a broader analysis of regarded as protection under the ADA.
We conclude that this set of facts was insufficient to support a directed verdict for the defendant. The District Court concluded that Taylor was proffering both a theory that he was disabled and a theory that he was wrongly regarded as disabled, which theories undercut one another. However, a plaintiff may plead in the alternative, and our caselaw finds no difficulty with pairing the two claims in one complaint. In Olson v. General Electric Astrospace, 101 F.3d 947 (3d Cir. 1996), we expressed no discomfort in denying summary judgment on a regarded as claim where the plaintiff had also alleged actual disability, although the evidence that was apparently offered to demonstrate [his] fitness as an employee ironically establishes that he was not substantially limited in a major life activity. Id. at 953. Similarly, in Arnold v. United Parcel Service, Inc., 136 F.3d 854, 860, 862 (1st Cir. 1998), the court held that there is no conflict in bringing an actual disability and a regarded as claim together. See also Koblosh v. Adelsick, No. 95C5209, 1996 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 17254, at  (N.D. Ill. Nov. 20, 1996) (same). The possibility that a plaintiff will bring both an actual disability and a regarded as claim is simply one allowed by the law; its possible abuse must be checked by the standard measures for deterring frivolous or bad-faith complaints. Nor is Taylor's position intrinsically contradictory, as he could have an impairment (whether or not it rose to the level of a disability) that could actually be accommodated, despite Pathmark's perception that his disability was too severe to accommodate. At all events, we disagree with the District Court's description of Taylor's claims. Taylor did not claim that he was not disabled with respect to the frozen food manager job, as the court suggested; he claimed that the job's requirements did not interact with his disability in a way 14 that prevented him from doing the job or that required accommodation (beyond allowing him to rest his leg on a milk crate from time to time, a measure that may not even technically be an accommodation and that we discuss further infra). The distinction is highlighted by the example of a deaf person who claims that he is qualified for a job that involves converting handwritten notes into word processing files: He would not be not disabled with respect to the job, because disability is not a job-specific determination, but the job would not be affected by his disability. The District Court also believed that Taylor was putting Pathmark in an impossible situation because Pathmark would be potentially liable if it accommodated Taylor or if it refused to accommodate him. However, Pathmark would not be liable for accommodating Taylor. It is only liable if it wrongly regarded him as so disabled that he could not work and therefore denied him a job. The accommodations that Pathmark provided or might have provided are not part of Taylor's regarded as claim. Taylor does not attempt to rely on Pathmark's pre-April 1994 accommodations of his condition to prove his regarded as claim, nor should he. An employer may decide to accommodate people who are not disabled under the ADA. If the District Court is concerned about the possibility of jury confusion on this issue, it might be appropriate to instruct the jury that Pathmark's voluntary accommodations, which are apparently formalized and routinized in Pathmark's employment manuals, are not evidence of a perception of disability.
We agree with the District Court that Pathmark regarded Taylor as able to work on April 29, 1994, but that is not material to Taylor's regarded as claim. Taylor's claim is that Pathmark erroneously regarded him as entirely and permanently unable to work at any job after it received Dr. Moore's evaluation in September 1995; his regarded as claim must be limited to the period following that evaluation. Taylor claims that he was not, in fact, so disabled that he could not perform any Pathmark jobs. 15 Taylor notes that he provided Pathmark with a letter on December 19, 1995, that stated that his restrictions as of December 1995 were the same as they had been during the November 1992-April 1994 period when he was working at Pathmark. The temporary July to December 1995 restrictions had been lifted. A reasonable factfinder could conclude that Taylor was not so impaired that he could not work at all after that point, and therefore that Pathmark's misunderstanding of his condition prevented him from getting work at Pathmark for some period after December 19, 1995. Under this scenario, Taylor had a viable regarded as claim after that date.
What a regarded as plaintiff must do to put the employer on notice that its perception is erroneous is an extremely difficult question. Pathmark in effect argues that: (1) until Taylor provided definitive notice of his ability to work and corrected Pathmark's belief, it cannot be held liable for considering him unable to work; and (2) his provision of notice proves that Pathmark correctly understood his condition after that point. We deal with Pathmark's second claim infra Section III.E, while in this section we make clear that Pathmark has the initial responsibility to evaluate employees correctly. Pathmark argues that reliance on information given by the plaintiff (or the plaintiff's agent) cannot found an ADA regarded as cause of action. As Pathmark puts it, For as long [as] Dr. Moore's report led Pathmark to believe that Taylor required a sedentary position, Pathmark was entitled to act accordingly. Pathmark's broad assertion cannot carry the day under the peculiar facts of this case. In most regarded as cases, it is likely that information on an employee's abilities comes from the employee or his agent, but the source of the information will not necessarily be determinative. The fact is that Dr. Moore's report labelled Taylor's restrictions temporary, not permanent. At all events, Taylor never provided Pathmark with the conclusion that he was substantially limited in a major life activity such that there were no jobs at Pathmark that he could perform, with or without accommodation. This case is dominated by miscommunications and misinterpretations, 16 and one of the points of regarded as protection is that employers cannot misinterpret information about an employee's limitations to conclude that the employee is incapable of performing a wide range of jobs. We find the cases Pathmark cites on reasonable reliance to be inapposite. In Wooten v. Farmland Foods, 58 F.3d 382 (8th Cir. 1995), for example, the court held that the evidence of an employer's perception of an employee's abilities based on a doctor's note provided by the employee was insufficient to establish a regarded as claim. The court held that Wooten's employer's perceptions were not based on stereotype or myth but on a doctor's written restrictions. But the law in this circuit is that aregarded as plaintiff can make out a case if the employer is innocently wrong about the extent of his or her impairment: Although the legislative history indicates that Congress was concerned about eliminating society's myths, fears, stereotypes and prejudices with respect to the disabled, the EEOC's Regulations and Interpretive Guidelines make clear that even an innocent misperception based on nothing more than a simple mistake of fact as to the severity, or even the very existence, of an individual's impairment can be sufficient to satisfy the statutory definition of a perceived disability. Thus whether or not [the defendant] was motivated by myth, fear or prejudice is not determinative of [the plaintiff 's] regarded as claim. Deane, 142 F.3d at 144 (citation omitted). Similarly, Riemer v. Illinois Department of Transportation, 148 F.3d 800 (7th Cir. 1998), sustained a regarded as claim where the employer's misperception about the effects of the plaintiff 's asthma, based on a doctor's report, led it to exclude the plaintiff from an entire class of jobs, and in Johnson v. American Chamber of Commerce Publishers, Inc., 108 F.3d 818 (7th Cir. 1997), the court wrote, If for no reason whatsoever an employer regards a person as disabled--if, for example, because of a blunder in reading medical records, it imputes to him a heart condition he never had--and takes adverse action, it has violated the statute . . . . Id. at 819; see also Dipol, 999 F. Supp. at 314 17 (the fact that the employer, after receiving information from a doctor, immediately placed the plaintiff on no-work status made out a regarded as claim); Mendez v. Gearan, 956 F. Supp. 1520, 1525 (N.D. Cal. 1997) (employer's mistaken perception that a temporary impairment was permanent could found a regarded as claim).4 We acknowledge the force of Pathmark's argument that it relied on information supplied by Taylor's doctor in concluding that it had no job available that met his restrictions during the period from October 1995 to December 1995 (Taylor informed Pathmark that the severe restrictions had been lifted on December 19). Taylor has not disputed that he did, in fact, have those temporarily heightened restrictions after the aggravation of his ankle injury. We conclude that a directed verdict as to that period was proper, because he has not disputed Pathmark's claim that restrictions of such severity precluded him from any Pathmark jobs, even with accommodation. Pathmark further argues that it was reasonable to rely on Dr. Moore's first evaluation until June 1996, when Dr. Moore filled out an updated questionnaire.5 We cannot, however, say that Pathmark's reliance on Dr. Moore'sfirst report necessarily excuses it entirely from liability. An employer can rely on an employee's information about restrictions, but it has to be right when it decides that those restrictions are permanent and that they prevent the employee from performing a wide class of jobs, as opposed _________________________________________________________________ 4. Dotson v. Electro-Wire Products, Inc., 890 F. Supp. 982 (D. Kan. 1995), another case cited by Pathmark, is distinguishable. In that case, the physician's note at issue did not describe an impairment that could reasonably be thought to substantially limit the plaintiff in a major life activity. On receipt, the defendant did not change the plaintiff 's job duties or take other actions to indicate that it considered her incapable of doing the general class of job. See id. at 991. In contrast, Pathmark sent Taylor a letter saying that his restrictions were permanent and that he was fired. 5. Pathmark characterizes this second questionnaire as a changed diagnosis. This is arguably a critical misdescription, since Taylor contends that Dr. Moore's restrictions were always temporary, as he indicated on the first form, and so the second form simply reflected the fact that the temporary restrictions had been lifted. 18 to one particular and limited job. An employer who simply, and erroneously, believes that a person is incapable of performing a particular job will not be liable under the ADA. Liability attaches only to a mistake that causes the employer to perceive the employee as disabled within the meaning of the ADA, i.e., a mistake that leads the employer to think that the employee is substantially limited in a major life activity. Pathmark argues that imperfection in its internal procedures--apparently a communication gap between the ADA Committee and those responsible for making an employment decision about Taylor--should not lead to ADA liability. Yet if the relevant decisionmakers wrongly believed that Taylor was completely unable to work because of miscommunication within Pathmark, the ADA puts on Pathmark the burden of correcting the problem, rather than leaving Taylor out in the cold. Cf. Deane, 142 F.3d at 149 (suggesting that informal cooperation and communication to correct mistakes is appropriate in a regarded as situation). Taylor offered Pathmark updated information on his condition on December 19, 1995, and he had Dr. Moore send further information after he received Pathmark's May 1996 letter; therefore, we cannot say that he is unarguably responsible for the misunderstanding. Except for the limited period noted above, judgment as a matter of law for Pathmark is inappropriate, because a reasonable jury could find that Taylor was not responsible for the error. In that case, Pathmark could be liable, even if its mistake were otherwise innocent. But on remand, Pathmark has a possible defense of reasonability, which we describe in greater detail in the next section.
Because the ADA imposes extensive requirements on employers and covers a broad range of conditions, new puzzles seem to arise from every case. Deane announced our conclusion that employer mistakes can lead to regarded as liability. The question then becomes: What limits, if any, are there to this principle? There are no clear answers in our precedent, the statute, the legislative history, or the EEOC's interpretive guidelines. We must, 19 however, answer the question to resolve this case. We believe that guidance can be found in the general logic of the ADA, which requires an interactive relationship between employer and employee, and concomitantly requires an individualized evaluation of employees' impairments. See Taylor v. Phoenixville Sch. Dist., No. 98-1273, ___ F.3d ___, 1999 WL 184138 (3d Cir. Apr. 5, 1999).6 While prejudice is not required for a successfulregarded as claim, we recognize that the ADA has as a major purpose the protection of individuals who are subject to stereotypes about their abilities. An employer who regards a kind of impairment--epilepsy, for example--as disqualifying all people affected by the impairment for a wide range of jobs is thus not entitled to a defense of reasonable mistake; under the ADA, it is the employer's burden to educate itself about the varying nature of impairments and to make individualized determinations about affected employees. However, there is no evidence in this case that Pathmark decisionmakers were infected with stereotypes or prejudice against the disabled. In situations such as this one, which do not involve prejudice, we think that a limited defense best serves the aims of the ADA: If the employer is factually mistaken about the extent of an employee's impairment, and the employee or his agent is responsible for the mistake, the employer is not liable under the ADA.7 _________________________________________________________________ 6. We are also influenced by the Supreme Court's decisions in Faragher v. City of Boca Raton, 524 U.S. 775 (1998), and Burlington Industries, Inc. v. Ellerth, 524 U.S. 742 (1998). In those cases, the Court determined that general principles of agency law justified imposing Title VII liability on employers for sexual harassment committed by supervisors, but defined an affirmative defense to liability in order to give employers incentives to create effective anti-harassment programs. The details of the defense were dictated by concerns for logic and equity, not by Title VII's explicit provisions. We take the same path here. 7. We note that it will not always be immediately clear whether a particular physician is an employee's agent. For example, whereas in Delaware, a worker seeking workers' compensation has a right to select an independent physician, see 19 Del. Code Ann. S 2323 (1998), the Pennsylvania Workers' Compensation Act allows an employer to establish a list of designated physicians or health care providers, and an 20 We emphasize that it is not reasonable for an employer to extrapolate from information provided by an employee based on stereotypes or fears about the disabled, and we think that the distinction between the effects of a type of impairment and an impairment's extent adequately captures the distinction: A belief that anyone with bipolar disorder or HIV infection is substantially limited in a major life activity is a conclusion about the effects of the impairment and only secondarily about the particular employee. An employer with such a belief is failing to make an individualized determination, as the ADA requires, and thus acts at its peril. If an employer believes that a perceived disability inherently precludes successful performance of the essential functions of a job, with or without accommodation, the employer must be correct about the affected employee's ability to perform the job in order to avoid liability; there is no defense of reasonable mistake. Any other outcome would defeat the ADA's attempt to eradicate what may be deeply rooted and seemingly rational presumptions about the abilities of the disabled. By contrast, a mistake about the extent of a particular employee's impairment made in the course of an individualized determination is further from the core of the ADA's concern, and a reasonability defense adequately protects employees' interests in not being erroneously regarded as disabled. We reaffirm that an employer is liable for mistakenly regarding an employee as disabled, unless the employer's perception is based on the employee's _________________________________________________________________ employee may be required to visit one of those on the list in order to maintain a workers' compensation claim, see 77 Pa. Stat. Ann. S 531(1)(I) (1998). An employer's employment, ownership, or control of such physicians or health care providers must be disclosed in order for them to be placed on the list. Even if the providers on the list are independent, if the employer designates them and relies on their judgments, the onus may well be on the employer, rather than the employee, to correct their mistakes. It is also possible that the list will consist of independent providers negotiated by the employees' labor union and the employer. See 77 Pa. Stat. Ann. S 1000.6(a)(3) (1998). We express no opinion on all these agency issues, which are not present here and will have to be resolved on a case-by-case basis. 21 unreasonable actions or omissions. The limited exception to liability for mistakes can be expressed as follows: If an employer regards a plaintiff as disabled based on a mistake in an individualized determination of the employee's actual condition rather than on a belief about the effects of the kind of impairment the employer regarded the employee as having, then the employer will have a defense if the employee unreasonably failed to inform the employer of the actual situation.8 This rule is consistent with our decision in Deane, in which we emphasized the employer's failure to take reasonable steps to learn the true extent of the plaintiff 's impairment. See Deane, 142 F.3d at 145. In Deane, we found a genuine issue of material fact as to whether the plaintiff had been perceived as disabled where the record documented confusion among the relevant decisionmakers as to the extent of the plaintiff 's physical impairment. See Deane, 142 F.3d at 145. Pathmark attempts to distinguish Deane by noting that the defendants in that case relied on a short phone conversation with the plaintiff to conclude that she could not perform any available job. The Deane court noted that the defendants did not evaluate the plaintiff, contact her physician, or independently review her medical records, but relied on one phone conversation with her. See Deane, 142 F.3d at 145. By contrast, Pathmark relied on Dr. Moore's medical report. The Deane facts do not define the outer limits of liability. Pathmark apparently made a significant error in treating _________________________________________________________________ 8. We recognize that there is a continuum of perceptions and that there will be difficult cases, but we think that our formulation provides appropriate guidance. For example, an employer who is informed that a particular individual has epilepsy might overestimate the limiting effects of that individual's epilepsy because of a general perception about the severity of epilepsy. If the employer mistakenly overestimates the degree of a person's impairment based on perceptions about the nature of the impairment, it is not basing its decision on an individualized evaluation. Moreover, the employer's defense would fail in such a case because the employee would have done nothing unreasonable in informing the employer of her condition. The employer should seek further specific information about the extent of the employee's impairment before it concludes that the employee is disabled. 22 Taylor's temporary restrictions as permanent. Taylor also offered evidence that Pathmark did not engage in a process of communication and cooperation, as we counseled employers to do in Deane. See id. at 149.9 Additionally, Pathmark argues that Taylor acted unreasonably under the circumstances: He waited until after the ADA Committee made its decision to have his doctor submit a new report. However, Taylor did not know until the May letter that Pathmark considered him permanently unable to work, and he did communicate with Pathmark in December 1995, approximately five months before he was fired, about his reduced restrictions. While Pathmark argues that Taylor bears the lion's share of responsibility for any miscommunication that occurred, there is evidence to the contrary. Taylor appears to have consistently sought reinstatement. Pathmark's own electronic mail suggests that his saga includedglitches. Pathmark waited approximately seven months after the ADA Committee considered his case to send him notice that he was terminated, apparently because of an oftenpostponed meeting of counsel. The ADA Committee itself did not meet on Taylor's case for one year after Pathmark's doctor last examined him, which constitutes a significant delay. Moreover, the record reflects that an outside consultant advised Pathmark that sharp disparities between Taylor's self-report and Dr. Moore's evaluation led her to strongly advise that an attempt be made to resolve the discrepancies. While there are no fixed rules for what an ADA plaintiff must do to correct an employer's expressed misperception, we think that a jury could find that Taylor did not act unreasonably in these circumstances and that Pathmark was responsible for the misunderstanding. Reasonability is _________________________________________________________________ 9. Pathmark also seeks to distinguish Deane by noting that there was a factual dispute in that case as to whether lifting was an essential function of the job, and there is no such dispute here. But that question goes to a totally different element of the plaintiff 's case, which is whether the plaintiff is qualified to perform the essential functions of the job. Taylor is not saying that Pathmark was wrong about the job description; he is arguing that Pathmark was wrong about him, at least after December 1995. 23 a fact-specific test, and, of course, the employee must have reason to know of the basis of the employer's decision before he can unreasonably fail to correct a mistake. This rule will encourage communication between employer and employee, in the same way that the interactive process for determining reasonable accommodations does. See Taylor, ___ F.3d at ___ (discussing the requirements of the interactive process).
Pathmark argues that it never regarded Taylor as disabled. It states that, when Dr. Moore gave it updated information in June 1996, it then understood that Taylor's restrictions were no longer as serious as they had previously been. Arguably, Pathmark simply decided not to take Taylor back, even knowing that he could work, until July 1997.10 Taylor responds that we cannot simply take Pathmark's word that it knew he was not disabled but refused to act on that information, since Taylor was never privy to its secret thought processes. In this posture, Taylor's argument is persuasive. If we were to accept Pathmark's argument, a plaintiff 's attempts to disabuse an employer's misperceptions about his disability could be used to eviscerate a regarded as claim; this would encourage potential plaintiffs to avoid communicating with employers and begin litigation that might otherwise be avoided. Particularly given the reasonability defense set forth in the previous section, we think that Pathmark cannot rely solely on Taylor's communications with it to prove that Pathmark did not regard him as disabled after June 1996. We note in this regard that the lack of internal communication, to which Pathmark appeals when asking us to excuse its reliance in 1994 on the various conflicting doctors' notes, could also have left Pathmark with a _________________________________________________________________ 10. If the contention were that Pathmark used Taylor's disability as a pretext for ridding itself of an employee with seniority under the union collective bargaining agreeement, Taylor would not have a successful claim that he was regarded as disabled. The ADA prohibits discrimination, not action taken using discrimination as a pretext. 24 continuing erroneous belief about Taylor. The ADA Committee, by its member's own testimony, never learned why Taylor was not accommodated and rehired, and a reasonable jury could conclude that the relevant Pathmark decisionmakers--apparently Pathmark counsel, in this case --continued to regard Taylor as disabled.
Pathmark also argues that Taylor never proved that there was a job that he could do that was open during the relevant time period. As Pathmark points out, it has no duty to create a special job for a disabled person. See EEOC Technical Assistance Manual at 90.0530 (an employer is not required to create a new job or bump an employee from an existing job as a reasonable accommodation); cf. Shiring v. Runyon, 90 F.3d 827 (3d Cir. 1996) (reaching the same result under the functionally identical Rehabilitation Act). Specifically, Pathmark argues that Taylor never proved that there was an available frozen food manager position during the relevant period; his old job was filled before he returned in 1992, and nothing in the record shows that there was a vacancy thereafter. Unless there was a frozen food vacancy, Pathmark persuasively reasons, there can be no causal connection between Pathmark's perception of Taylor's abilities and its failure to give him the frozen food job. Taylor responds that he did not pursue the frozen food job more aggressively because his union representative was told that he was going to be put back to work. This is an issue of fact to be resolved on remand. Taylor also suggests that he would have wanted to be considered for a cashier job, and there apparently were cashier vacancies for which the ADA Committee could have considered him. Pathmark's own ADA manuals suggested that cashier jobs did not require extended walking and standing. Furthermore, under the ADA the employer may be required to participate with a covered employee to identify a vacant position that the employee can perform, as employees may otherwise lack the ability to identify such positions. See Taylor, ___ F.3d at ___, slip op. at 35-36; Mengine v. Runyon, 114 F.3d 415, 420 (3d Cir. 1997). Therefore, there is at least a genuine and material issue as 25 to whether Pathmark would have had a position for Taylor in 1996. If Taylor prevails, the District Court might have to decide in the first instance whether a regarded as plaintiff is entitled to accommodation even though he is not disabled. We have yet to resolve this issue. On the one hand, the statute does not appear to distinguish between disabled and regarded as individuals in requiring accommodation. On the other, it seems odd to give an impaired but not disabled person a windfall because of her employer's erroneous perception of disability, when other impaired but not disabled people are not entitled to accommodation. See Deane, 142 F.3d at 149 n.12. The debate over accommodation has heretofore focused on what constitutes a reasonable accommodation, not on the definition of accommodation vel non. In its natural meaning, an accommodation would seem to be some change in the way the employer normally requires or allows the job to be done.11 If the employer routinely allows employees to perform a job in one of several ways and an employee chooses one of those ways, perhaps in order to alleviate an impairment that does not rise to the level of a disability, then there would not seem to be any accommodation involved. In this case, the requested accommodation is the use of a milk crate to sit on while stocking lower shelves. This may or may not be a true accommodation, and it might therefore be unnecessary to reach the difficult question of entitlement to accommodation. See App. at A256 (vocational rehabilitation specialist testified that I believe there would be little or no real accommodation necessary _________________________________________________________________ 11. Webster's Third New International Dictionary defines accommodation as, inter alia, something that is supplied for convenience or to satisfy a need, the provision of what is needed or desired for convenience, or adaptation, adjustment. Webster's Third New International Dictionary 12 (1966). The last definition seems most appropriate to the context of the ADA. None of these definitions would make the standard conditions of a workplace accommodations, as preexisting conditions or practices would not be supplied or provided to take account of an employee's disability. 26 for the frozen food job); id. at A257-58 (reaching the same conclusion about stock jobs). Pathmark's representative testified that use of a milk crate created safety issues, but this was called into question on cross-examination, and Taylor testified that he used a milk crate to do his job for fourteen months without objection from Pathmark. Moreover, Taylor's expert, Yohe, testified that the use of milk crates was standard in supermarket stocking generally. There is thus a material issue of fact as to whether use of a milk crate was a standard way to perform stocking duties at Pathmark. Furthermore, even if use of a milk crate is an accommodation and Taylor is not entitled to accommodation, he may well be entitled to other forms of relief, such as injunctive relief and damages, as well as attorney's fees, and so the accommodation question is not critical to the success of his claim. See Deane, 142 F.3d at 149 n.12.