Opinion ID: 502246
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: Whether The Department Reasonably Accommodated Carter

Text: 20 Next, we consider whether the district court properly concluded that the Department satisfied its burden of proving that it reasonably accommodated Carter's handicap. We have no quarrel with the district court's factual determinations that the Department provided persons to act as readers for plaintiff, it furnished special equipment and office space, and it decreased plaintiff's workload, Carter, 651 F.Supp. at 1301; these findings are amply supported by the record. Nor do we disagree with the district court's formulation of the applicable legal standard in this case; although [t]he government is not obligated under the statute to provide plaintiff with every accommodation he may request, the government must, at a minimum, provide reasonable accommodation as is necessary to enable him to perform his essential functions. Id. at 1301 (emphasis added). Rather, our concern is whether the district court, in applying the appropriate legal principles to the particular facts of this case, could properly find that the accommodations provided by the Department made it possible for Carter to perform his essential responsibilities. As we discussed above, our review of this application of law to fact is not limited by the clearly erroneous standard. 21 Carter testified that during the period covered by the complaint, he had only two part-time readers, who together spent a total of 18 hours a week (approximately 3.5 hours a day) with him; that neither of those readers was selected by Carter, that Carter repeatedly told his supervisors that his readers could not read and didn't have the skills necessary; and that it was not until April 1982 that he was given a reader of his choice. See Tr. at 77, 83, 84. On the other hand, Carter conceded at trial that he never told his readers that they were not satisfactory or made any suggestions as to how they could improve their services. See id. at 116-17. Furthermore, in a memorandum to the acting director of the Special Concerns Staff dated August 27, 1981, Carter himself stated that in order to perform his duties, he needed a reader to work a minimum of 20 hours per week--only a few more hours of reader time than the amount he actually received. See id. at 211. Moreover, Carter's supervisor Pullen testified that the personnel office, at his request, immediately made efforts to secure for Carter a full-time reader that [Carter] had some say in selecting, and that although Carter did not get a reader of his choice until April 1982, he had access to anybody in the office in the meanwhile, since the entire Special Concerns Staff had been asked to be available to Mr. Carter any time he needed some help reading. Id. at 228-33. In addition, the record indicates that even after Carter was provided with the reader of his choice, his supervisors continued to find his work unsatisfactory and, in June 1982, recommended that he be discharged. See id. at 274. Finally, while other people in the OCR were drafting up to 12 letters per week, Carter's workload was reduced to half that amount, 6 letters per week. 2 See id. at 248. 22 Based on this evidence, the trial court concluded that the government had reasonably accommodated Carter and that Carter had not substantiated his contention that the additional accommodations he requested--including a voice synthesized computer and two floppy disk drives--were necessary for adequate performance of his job. See Tr. at 98. To be sure, a reader of the record may be somewhat perplexed as to why the Department would assign Carter to a job that was so research and reading-intensive in the first place and then delay in providing Carter with full-time readers. Nonetheless, the district court could reasonably conclude that the accommodations actually provided by the Department made it possible for Carter to perform his essential duties. We therefore uphold the district court's ultimate finding that the Department did not fail to reasonably accommodate Carter in violation of Sec. 501 of the Rehabilitation Act. 23 We also uphold the finding that the Department did not retaliate against Carter in violation of Title VII of the Civil Rights Act, 42 U.S.C. Sec. 2000e-3(a). The record amply supports the district court's determination that Carter failed to prove that there existed a causal connection between his filing of the EEO complaint and the adverse employment action taken against him. 24 Affirmed.