Opinion ID: 148184
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: The ADA Reassignment Duty and the Meaning of Vacant

Text: The Americans with Disabilities Act commands that no employer discriminate against a qualified individual on the basis of disability in regard ... terms, conditions, and privileges of employment. 42 U.S.C. § 12112(a). A qualified individual is an individual who, with or without reasonable accommodation, can perform the essential functions of the employment position that such individual holds or desires. 42 U.S.C. § 12111(8). Within its definition of discriminate, the ADA includes not making reasonable accommodations to the known physical or mental limitations of an otherwise qualified individual with a disability. 42 U.S.C. § 12112(b)(5)(A). Finally, the Act states that such a reasonable accommodation may include reassignment to a vacant position. 42 U.S.C. § 12111(9)(B). The parties do not dispute that Duvall's cystic fibrosis renders him disabled within the meaning of the statute. ( See Apl't App. at 392-93.) Therefore, resolution of this case turns on whether the ADA required GP to reassign Duvall either to his old position in the shipping department until it was ready to be permanently outsourced to NLS, or to a position in the storeroom during the three months of the summer of 2006 in which he was unable to work in the converting department and was not offered a position in the storeroom. To answer that question, we first consider the scope of the duty of reassignment imposed by the ADA in this circuit, then define the term vacant in the statute, and finally apply that definition to Duvall's circumstances.
This court's most thorough exploration of the ADA reassignment duty was in Smith v. Midland Brake, Inc., 180 F.3d 1154 (10th Cir.1999) (en banc). In that case, we determined that the statutory duty upon employers to reassign disabled employees to vacant positions is mandatory. If a disabled employee can be accommodated by reassignment to a vacant position, the employer must do more than consider the disabled employee alongside other applicants; the employer must offer the employee the vacant position. Id. at 1167. Midland Brake sets out the elements of a claimed ADA violation based on a failure to reassign a disabled employee: (1) The employee is a disabled person within the meaning of the ADA and has made any resulting limitations from his or her disability known to the employer; (2) The preferred option of accommodation within the employee's existing job cannot reasonably be accomplishe[d;] (3) The employee requested the employer reasonably to accommodate his or her disability by reassignment to a vacant position, which the employee may identify at the outset or which the employee may request the employer identify through an interactive process, in which the employee in good faith was willing to, or did, cooperate; (4) The employee was qualified, with or without reasonable accommodation, to perform one or more appropriate vacant jobs within the company that the employee must, at the time of the summary judgment proceeding, specifically identify and show were available within the company at or about the time the request for reassignment was made; and (5) The employee suffered injury because the employer did not offer to reassign the employee to any appropriate vacant position. Id. at 1179. The employer's obligation to reassign a disabled employee is not, however, without limit. In Midland Brake, we recognized the overarching principle that all accommodations under the ADA must be governed by the statutory modifier of reasonableness. Id. at 1171. In addition to that blanket principle, we noted a number of specific situations in which reassignment would be unreasonable. Four of these situations are potentially relevant to this case. First, [i]t is not reasonable to require an employer to create a new job for the purpose of reassigning an employee to that job. Id. at 1174. Next, the ADA does not require the employer to reassign a disabled employee to a position that would constitute a promotion. Id. at 1176 ([The ADA] is not a statute giving rise to a right to advancement.). Third, the ADA does not require an employer to reassign a disabled employee in a manner that would contravene that employer's important fundamental policies underlying legitimate business interests. Id. at 1175. Finally, and most importantly for the purposes of this appeal, the job to which a disabled employee seeks reassignment must, as the statute's text dictates, be vacant. Id. [I]f a position is not vacant it is not reasonable to require an employer to bump another employee in order to reassign a disabled employee to that position. Id. ( citing H.R.Rep. No. 101-485(II), at 63 (1990), reprinted in 1990 U.S.C.C.A.N. 303, 345 ([R]eassignment need only be to a vacant position`bumping' another employee out of a position to create a vacancy is not required.)).
The operative question in this case, therefore, is: did GP have any vacant positions to which Duvall could have been reassigned during the relevant three-month period between May and August of 2006? It is uncontested that some jobs in both the shipping department and the storeroom during that period were being filled by temporary workers provided by Encadria. In the case of shipping, those temporary workers were filling in until NLS employees could permanently take over the department; in the storeroom, the Encadria temps were working pending GP's storeroom restructuring plans, which were completed in late July 2006. According to GP, positions filled by Encadria temporary workers were not vacant within the meaning of the statute; Duvall maintains, to the contrary, that if a GP position was filled by an Encadria temp, then that position wasas far as GP was concernedvacant. To decide which of these interpretations is correct, we must engage in statutory interpretation to determine the meaning of the term vacant. We have not previously defined the term vacant for the purposes of the ADA, and we have not found any cases from our sister circuits doing so. [2] Nor has the Supreme Court defined the term, but in US Airways, Inc. v. Barnett, 535 U.S. 391, 399, 122 S.Ct. 1516, 152 L.Ed.2d 589 (2002), the Court observed that [n]othing in the [ADA] suggests that Congress intended the word `vacant' to have a specialized meaning. We therefore begin our analysis by considering the ordinary meaning of vacant. See Conrad v. Phone Directories Co., 585 F.3d 1376, 1381 (10th Cir.2009) (noting that we begin statutory analysis by considering the ordinary meaning of statutory terms, and we may consult dictionaries to determine that meaning). Webster's Dictionary offers two relevant definitions of vacant: not filled or occupied by an incumbent [or] possessor and being without ... occupant. Webster's Third New International Dictionary 2527 (1986 ed.); accord Barnett, 535 U.S. at 409, 122 S.Ct. 1516 (O'Connor, J., concurring) (quoting Webster's definition). These definitions, however, fail to provide for all the nuances of the employment relationship. To arrive at a proper meaning for the term vacant, we must consider it in the context of the statute as a whole in this case, as a regulation of the employment relationship. See Conrad, 585 F.3d at 1381 (We ... take into account the broader context of the statute as a whole when ascertaining the meaning of a particular provision.) (quotation omitted). In the employment context, we hold that a position is vacant with respect to a disabled employee for the purposes of the ADA if it would be available for a similarly-situated non-disabled employee to apply for and obtain. [3] This definition best serves the non-discriminatory aims of the ADA. Congress' purpose in passing the statute was to place disabled employees on an equal footing with their non-disabled coworkers. See Kornblau v. Dade County, 86 F.3d 193, 194 (11th Cir.1996) (The purpose of the [ADA] is to place those with disabilities on an equal footing, not to give them an unfair advantage.). This is reflected at the very core of the statute, in the definition of a qualified individual. That category is limited to those disabled employees who, with or without reasonable accommodation, can perform the essential functions of the employment position that such individual holds or desires. 42 U.S.C. § 12111(8) (emphasis added). To be covered under the statute, the disabled employee must be capable of performing the essential core of the job at issue. Jarvis v. Potter, 500 F.3d 1113, 1121 (10th Cir.2007) ([O]ne who cannot perform the essential functions of the job, even with a reasonable accommodation, is not an `otherwise qualified' individual.). And employers are not required to modify the essential functions of a position in order to accommodate a disabled employee. Midland Brake, 180 F.3d at 1178 (Although some `job restructuring' may be required, if the job restructuring goes to the modification of essential job requirements and is substantial, it is not required.) (citation omitted); see also 29 C.F.R. pt. 1630 App. § 1630.2(o) (An employer ... is not required to reallocate essential functions.). If the term vacant meant anything other than available to a similarly-situated non-disabled employee, we would run the risk of transforming the ADA from an antidiscrimination statute into a mandatory preference statute. Cf. Dalton v. Subaru-Isuzu Automotive, Inc., 141 F.3d 667, 679 (7th Cir.1998) (noting that requiring an employer to reassign a disabled employee in a manner that contravened a legitimate, nondiscriminatory policy would convert a nondiscrimination statute into a mandatory preference statute, a result which would be both inconsistent with the nondiscriminatory aims of the ADA and an unreasonable imposition on the employers and coworkers of disabled employees). And such a result would effectively require employers to create new positions specifically for disabled employeespositions not available to nondisabled employees. Courts have universally held that the ADA does not require this. See Midland Brake, 180 F.3d at 1174 (collecting cases). In sum, when a disabled employee seeks the reasonable accommodation of reassignment to a vacant position, positions within the company are vacant for the purposes of the ADA when they would be available to similarly-situated nondisabled employees to apply for and obtain.
Having defined the term vacant in the statute, we may now apply that definition to Duvall to determine whether summary judgment in favor of GP was appropriate. While Midland Brake recognized that a vacant position may come to light as part of the interactive process between the disabled employee and the employer, we have subsequently clarified that, at the summary judgment stage, the plaintiff-employee bears the burden of specifically identifying a vacant position, reassignment to which would serve as a reasonable accommodation. Taylor v. Pepsi-Cola Co., 196 F.3d 1106, 1110 (10th Cir. 1999) (To survive summary judgment, Plaintiff must establish that he was qualified to perform an appropriate vacant job which he must specifically identify and show was available within the company at or about the time he requested reassignment.); accord McBride v. BIC Consumer Prods. Mfg. Co., 583 F.3d 92, 97 (2d Cir.2009); Shapiro v. Township of Lakewood, 292 F.3d 356, 360 n. 1 (3d Cir.2002); Phelps v. Optima Health, Inc., 251 F.3d 21, 27 (1st Cir.2001); Ozlowski v. Henderson, 237 F.3d 837, 840 (7th Cir. 2001). A review of the record in this case reveals that Duvall has failed to carry that burden. To establish that the Encadria-filled positions at the mill were, in fact, vacant GP positions, Duvall relies entirely upon Karl Meyers' deposition testimony that Encadria filled positions that were open that we had. (Apl't App. at 214.) Thus, according to Duvall, since Encadria temporary workers filled positions in both the storeroom and the shipping department during the three months he was out of work, GP should have reassigned him to one of those open positions. But even drawing every reasonable inference from Meyers' testimony in Duvall's favor which we are required to do on review of a grant of summary judgment [4] that testimony fails to answer what we have identified as the operative question. Even if those positions were open positions that [GP] had, that does not answer whether the positions were vacant, such that other, nondisabled GP employees would have been able to apply for and obtain them. The undisputed evidence was that GP's business plan was to occupy these positions exclusively with Encadria contract employees until they would permanently be filled with NLS employees or until GP later determined to make the storeroom positions vacant again for its own employees. Thus, from the perspective of GP's employees, the positions were not vacant and available to any of them at the time Duvall sought an accommodating assignment into one of those positions. And because Duvall's evidence fails to create a genuine issue of material fact on that question, we must affirm the district court. Indeed, even though we view Meyers' testimony in the light most favorable to Duvall, the additional, uncontroverted evidence of GP's outsourcing plans would prohibit us from going so far down the road of inference as to find that the Encadria-filled positions were vacant. Duvall has not rebutted GP's evidence that it planned to outsource all but the palletizer positions in shipping to NLS; nor has he rebutted the documentary evidence establishing that staffing in the storeroom at the time in question was in flux. Duvall has not pointed to a single GP employee who was given an Encadria-filled position in either of these departments during the time in question. [5] Therefore, Duvall failed to carry his burden to establish the existence of a vacant position to which he could have been reassigned, and summary judgment was appropriate.