Court Opinion

ID: 9495924
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-05 16:13:25.950689+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:57:16.158520
License: Public Domain

JACOBS, Circuit Judge,
concurring.
The dissent argues that the plaintiff, a subway token-clerk who suffers from insomnia when she is underground or near trains, may be entitled to an accommodation reassigning her to a clerical position.
The dissenting argument is based on the buried assumption that an employee is disabled (and an employer owes an accommodation) even when the impairment is caused by the particular job and would not exist if the employee did something else. Virtually all ramifications of this assumption (if adopted) would be absurd.
For example, if a nasty supervisor induces a stress level that substantially impairs an employee’s sleep (a major life activity), I do not think that the employer is required to accommodate the sleep impairment by a transfer to a boss who is nicer. Similarly, a lifeguard who has had a near-drowning experience cannot demand a desk job on the ground that she would hyperventilate (arguably a substantial impairment of the major life activity of breathing), or suffer insomnia, if she were to go in the water. And a person whose fear of flying impairs his breathing or sleep cannot insist on circus employment as one of the human cannon-balls and compel an accommodation that allows him to sell the tickets.
According to the dissent, the plaintiffs insomnia is merely exacerbated rather than caused by working underground; even so, however, the requested reassignment would not be a reasonable accommodation. The dissent assumes that if a disability has been shown and an accommodation named, the burden shifts to the employer to advance a cost-benefit analysis showing that the named accommodation creates an undue burden. See 42 U.S.C. § 12111(10)(B); Borkowski v. Valley Central School District, 63 F.3d 131, 138 (2d Cir.1995). That assumption makes sense in the common run of cases, in which the named accommodation would either enable the employee to perform the essential job duties or in some demonstrable way alleviate or treat the disabling condition. See, e.g., Lovejoy-Wil-son v. NOCO Motor Fuel, Inc., 263 F.3d 208, 217-218 (2d Cir.2001); Parker v. Columbia Pictures Indus., 204 F.3d 326, 335-36 (2d Cir.2000); Stone v. City of Mount Vernon, 118 F.3d 92, 93-94, 100 (2d Cir.1997); Wernick v. Federal Reserve Bank of New York, 91 F.3d 379, 383-84 (2d Cir.1996).
This case (as the dissent conceives it) would present a new, intermediate question: whether the expected benefit to the employee of the accommodation requested is capable of being gauged, so that a cost-benefit analysis can be done; if not, the accommodation is unreasonable as a matter of law. See Borkowski, 63 F.3d at 138 (“In short, an accommodation is reasonable only if its costs are not clearly disproportionate to the benefits that it will produce.”). The accommodation demanded here places appreciable costs on the employer: a subway token-seller would be removed from the vicinity of subways and relieved from selling tokens. Moreover, the accommodation of insomnia by reassignments that reduce stress or alleviate any. phobia could easily entail transfers of numerous token-sellers who could plausibly assert insomnia and demand work above-ground (or below), in the day (or the night), etcetera, according to their self-described psychological imperatives. See 42 U.S.C. § 12111(10)(B)(ii)(defining relevant cost factors to include “the effect on expenses and resources, or the impact oth*109erwise of such accommodations upon the operation of the facility”).
On the other side of the balance, the benefit of accommodating this employee’s insomnia cannot be estimated, depending as it does on the relative severity of the disorder (as compared with some unknown norm for sleeptime), the absolute severity of the disorder (which is self-reported and depends on a drowsy person’s estimate of how long she is unconscious), and the efficacy or sufficiency of measures taken at work to help the plaintiff sleep better at night (which wholly depends on the employee’s say-so).1
An accommodation that is demanded in order to reduce stress or make the employee more tranquil is in the nature of an amenity that if broadly required would transform the workplace in a way incompatible with productivity.

. The dissent puts store in the medical diagnosis that this plaintiffs insomnia is a product of post-traumatic stress disorder. [Dissent at 110.] That syndrome is real enough, but it is (as the phrase denotes) a diagnostic grouping in each case of whatever nervous manifestations a particular person suffers in the wake of stress. One person may react to stress by insomnia, another by sleeping overmuch; one person is manic, another is enervated; one overeats, another fasts; one cannot go out in public, another needs a crowd. The diagnosis does not predict the symptom of insomnia, does not suggest its severity or treatment, and therefore cannot be used by an employer to differentiate the disabled from persons who are merely impaired or uncomfortable.