Employer Learns Reasonable Accommodation Lesson that’s Instructive to All

The Supreme Judicial Court recently clarified the legal hurdles employers must satisfy when defending claims that they failed to reasonably accommodate their disabled employees. In doing so, it gave one employer a lesson that all will be well-advised to pay attention to.

The case involved a police officer who suffered a head injury. Though he contended he remained capable of performing patrol officer duties without posing an unreasonable risk of injury to himself or others, his department disagreed. It confined him to desk duty, then defended his lawsuit claiming, in effect, that it acted in a good faith belief that the officer could not perform the essential functions of his patrol job. After a superior court judge granted the department summary judgment, the SJC reversed. It held that the issue is not whether an employer in such circumstances acts in good faith — something an employee will have an extremely difficult time disproving — but whether the employee demonstrates he/she can do the relevant job with reasonable accommodation. The department now faces a jury trial on this relatively narrow and perhaps difficult question.

The case illustrates a common problem employers face in handicap cases — a failure to properly understand their duties to reasonably accommodate disabled workers. The fact is that workers must be accommodated whenever reasonably possible, and employers should consider this carefully and thoroughly before denying accommodation requests. Among other things, they should fully review all possible job adjustments and engage in meaningful discussions with their employees. Only when no accommodation is possible or the ones that do exist impose undue hardship should employers deny their employees requests. Such decisions should never be made lightly.