March 25, 2025
Is an Employee Who Can Perform Essential Functions Without Reasonable Accommodation Entitled to One Under the ADA?
Is an employee with a disability entitled to a reasonable accommodation under the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) even if the employee can perform the essential functions of the job without one?
The 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals recently held the answer is, “Yes” overruling the District Court that had determined the answer was, “No.” Why the varying opinions?
The employee, who was a teacher and had PTSD requested a 15-minute break every afternoon so she could leave school grounds campus and “compose herself away from the workplace, an environment that tends to trigger her symptoms. ” This employee admitted she could perform the essential functions of her job without the reasonable accommodation, but it would be under “great duress and harm.”
The 2nd Circuit explained that an individual’s, “[a]bility to perform the essential functions of the job is relevant to a failure-to-accommodate claim, but it is not dispositive.” The court first points out that the ADA covers “an individual who, with or without reasonable accommodation, can perform the essential functions of the employment position.” Next the ADA next requires a covered employer to provide such individual with a reasonable accommodation.
Thus, the court concludes, “Putting these provisions together, an employer must, absent undue hardship, offer a reasonable accommodation…to an employee with a disability if that employee is capable of performing the essential functions of her job with or without the accommodation. Under a straightforward reading of the phrase ‘with or without,’ the fact that an employee can perform her job responsibilities without a reasonable accommodation does not mean that she must: she may be a “qualified individual” entitled to reasonable accommodation even if she can perform the essential functions of her job without on.”
