Opinion ID: 2718298
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: Flexible Work Hours Can Be A Reasonable

Text: Accommodation Determining whether a particular type of accommodation is reasonable is commonly a contextual and fact-specific inquiry. See Taylor v. Rice, 451 F.3d 898, 908 (D.C. Cir. 2006) (“An accommodation may be ‘reasonable on its face’ 3 The Secretary argues that no reasonable jury could find that the Department denied Solomon’s request for a flexible schedule. Secretary Br. 44–45. Because the Secretary did not make that argument before the district court, it is forfeited. See Flynn v. Commissioner, 269 F.3d 1064, 1068–1069 (D.C. Cir. 2001). 13    or it may be reasonable as applied, i.e., ‘on the particular facts’ of the case”) (quoting U.S. Airways, Inc. v. Barnett, 535 U.S. 391, 401, 405 (2002)) (emphasis added). That is because the contours and demands of an employment position and the capacities of a workplace can vary materially from employer to employer. See McMillan v. City of New York, 711 F.3d 120, 126 (2d Cir. 2013) (rather than deciding cases “based on ‘unthinking reliance on intuition about the methods by which jobs are to be performed,’ a court must conduct ‘a fact-specific inquiry into both the employer’s description of a job and how the job is actually performed in practice’”) (citation omitted). Technological advances and the evolving nature of the workplace, moreover, have contributed to the facilitative options available to employers (although their reasonableness in any given case still must be proven). See EEOC v. Ford Motor Co., 752 F.3d 634, 641 (6th Cir. 2014) (because of “the advance of technology in the employment context,” “attendance at the workplace can no longer be assumed to mean attendance at the employer’s physical location”). For those reasons, it is rare that any particular type of accommodation will be categorically unreasonable as a matter of law. This case is no exception. Solomon requested a maxiflex schedule that would afford her the ability to come to work late on certain days or leave early on other days, as her condition required, as long as all her work was completed properly and in a timely and secure manner. See generally U.S. OFFICE OF PERSONNEL MANAGEMENT, HANDBOOK ON ALTERNATIVE WORK SCHEDULES, available at http://www.opm.gov/policy-dataoversight/pay-leave/reference-materials/handbooks/alternative -work-schedules/ (“maxiflex schedule” is one “that contains core hours on fewer than 10 workdays in the biweekly pay period and in which a full-time employee has a basic work requirement of 80 hours for the biweekly pay period, but in 14 which an employee may vary the number of hours worked on a given workday or the number of hours each week within the limits established for the organization”). The Secretary argues, and the district court agreed, Solomon, 845 F. Supp. 2d at 72, that the “ability to work a regular and predictable schedule” is, “as a matter of law, an essential element of any job,” Secretary Br. 38–39. That is incorrect. While the appropriateness of flexible working hours as an accommodation in any given case will have to be established, nothing in the Rehabilitation Act takes such a schedule off the table as a matter of law. Quite the opposite, the Rehabilitation Act, through its incorporation of the Americans with Disabilities Act’s standards, see 29 U.S.C. § 791(g), is explicit that a “reasonable accommodation” may include “job restructuring” and “part-time or modified work schedules.” 42 U.S.C. § 12111(9)(B); see also 5 C.F.R. § 610.111(d) (Office of Personnel Management regulations permit agencies to establish flexible or compressed work schedules); U.S. OFFICE OF PERSONNEL MANAGEMENT, NEGOTIATING FLEXIBLE AND COMPRESSED WORK SCHEDULES (July 1995) (federal employment regulations do not prescribe any “minimum or maximum amount of flexibility” with respect to work schedules established by federal employers). Our sister courts, too, have recognized that “[p]hysical presence at or by a specific time is not, as a matter of law, an essential function of all employment.” McMillan, 711 F.3d at 126 (emphasis added). Instead, “penetrating factual analysis” is required to determine whether a rigid on-site schedule is an essential function of the job in question. Id.; see also Ward v. Massachusetts Health Research Inst., Inc., 209 F.3d 29, 34– 35 (1st Cir. 2000) (employer must specifically prove that “a regular and reliable schedule” is an essential element of a position, which “requires a fact-intensive inquiry”). 15 The Secretary, moreover, need only look around the neighborhood to witness both the availability and viability of maxiflex work schedules specifically within the federal government. The Office of Personnel Management, which is responsible for “executing, administering, and enforcing” rules and regulations governing federal employment, 5 U.S.C. § 1103, has identified maxiflex as a potential option for qualifying federal employment positions. See HANDBOOK ON ALTERNATIVE WORK SCHEDULES, supra. In addition, the Chief of Human Resources for Solomon’s division admitted that “some agencies” provide maxiflex as a potential workplace option. Both the district court and the Secretary invoked Carr v. Reno, 23 F.3d 525 (D.C. Cir. 1994), as establishing that a regular and predictable schedule is an essential function of all jobs. That greatly overreads Carr. In that case, the evidence showed that Carr’s job required her to pick up and code papers for input into a computerized database at precisely 4:00 p.m. each day. Id. at 527. Her disability caused her to miss work on short notice, often when commuting in the morning, and so incapacitated her that she was unable to perform even the basic task of calling in sick. Id. Carr’s frequent, unpredictable, and abrupt absences caused the lone remaining clerk undue hardship because that clerk, time and again and without warning, had to do twice the work in the same amount of time. Id. In addition, Carr conceded that her job involved “tight 4:00 p.m. deadlines.” Id. at 530. This court stressed that those unique and undisputed facts made Carr the “unusual Rehabilitation Act case that    can be resolved against the plaintiff without extensive fact finding.” Id. at 531 (emphasis added). Our categorization of Carr as “unusual” means it could not have been the genesis of a sweeping and categorical legal 16 rule against substantial flexibility in work hours. Subsequent precedent proves the point. In Breen v. Department of Transportation, 282 F.3d 839 (D.C. Cir. 2002), we held that Carr had no application to a case where (as here) the plaintiff sought a modified work schedule and did not “concede[] that there was a critical element of her position—such as a daily deadline—that rendered the accommodation she proposed ineffectual,” id. at 843. Because Breen “offered evidence disputing her employer’s claim that the job restructuring she proposed was incompatible with the essential functions of her position,” we reversed the grant of summary judgment. Id. In the same vein is Woodruff v. Peters, 482 F.3d 521 (D.C. Cir. 2007). Woodruff sought accommodations that, in the past, the agency had de facto afforded him: the ability to set his own schedule and to take breaks in the middle of the day. Id. at 528. Because Woodruff came forward with evidence that his job did not require him “to be physically present in the office,” and that he had successfully performed the “essential functions” of his job when he was previously afforded those accommodations, we held that “his case is at least strong enough to escape summary judgment.” Id. Accordingly, the district court’s holding that an “openended” or maxiflex schedule is “unreasonable as a matter of law,” Solomon, 845 F. Supp. 2d at 72, is incorrect. Whether a maxiflex or other flexible workplace schedule is a reasonable accommodation for a given employee in a given position is a case-by-case factual inquiry, not a foreordained legal conclusion.