Opinion ID: 148184
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: ADA Reassignment in the Tenth Circuit

Text: 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.)).