By Al Vreeland, JD, Lehr Middlebrooks Vreeland & Thompson, P.C.
Since the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) was amended in 2008, the focus of ADA compliance has shifted from whether an employee has a disability (because everything now qualifies as one) to whether an employee’s disability can be reasonably accommodated.
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The keystone of the reasonable accommodation analysis has become the “interactive process” in which the employer and the employee exchange ideas about potential accommodations. Thus far, most ADA cases have challenged employers’ efforts to engage in the interactive process and actions in rushing to judgment that a reasonable accommodation is not possible (even when the outcome is obvious).
Here, we look at a case in which an employee refused to engage in the interactive process and then sued her employer for failing to accommodate her disability.
Restrictions, restrictions, and more restrictions
Kimberly Agee began working as a “team member” in Mercedes’ automobile assembly plant in Vance in April 2005. From March 2009 to June 2010, she took a leave of absence while she was being treated for breast cancer. When she returned to work, she was assigned to the body shop.
Agee later developed pain in her arm as a result of her breast cancer surgery. On April 11, 2012, she obtained a note from her personal physician, Dr. April Maddux, stating she should lift no more than 15 pounds. Over the next few weeks, Mercedes assigned Agee to different stations in the body shop to accommodate her 15-pound lifting restriction.
The same month, Agee found out she was pregnant. On April 26, she obtained a note from her OB-GYN, Dr. Nathan Ross, stating she was “not to work more than 40 hours/week.” Mercedes’ medical department told her the note did not have sufficient information about why she could not work more than 40 hours per week. On April 30, she obtained another note from Ross explaining that she could not work more than 40 hours per week and could not “do any heavy lifting, pulling or pushing due to her pregnancy.”