ADA opinion, if followed, could impact the scope of accommodation requirements

The ADA is heating up, nowhere more so than the area of reasonable accommodation of a disability. This is why a Nov. 4, 2010, opinion in Equal Employment Opportunity Commission v. Life Technologies Corp. is of note. Senior U.S. District Judge William M. Nickerson of the District of Maryland wrote the decision. A company employee is profoundly deaf. His job required him to attend numerous meetings for which the company sometimes provided an interpreter, other times not. On those occasions when it didn’t, the company provided the employee with written materials or one-on-one time with his supervisor. The employee said he needed an interpreter at all meetings and complained to the EEOC, which filed suit on his behalf. The legal issue: Is an employer obligated to provide just an accommodation designed to help an employee perform the essential functions of the job, or must an employee do more and provide an accommodation that, in the words of the ADA regulations, provide one that allows employees with a disability to enjoy "equal benefits and privileges of employment as are enjoyed . . . by other similarly situated employees without disabilities." The court, in denying summary judgment to the employer, adopted the more expansive view in the regulations. The company argued that a full-time interpreter is an undue burden, because it costs too much. The court rejected this argument, noting that the company only contacted one translation service and that the EEOC identified a less expensive alternative, namely a video translation service. It will now be up to a jury to determine if the employer fulfilled its legal obligation to provide a reasonable accommodation. This is a big-time opinion. Recall that the amendments to the ADA expand the definition of disability. You don’t need to be a Stephen Hawking to figure out the physics of it: More disabled employees means more requests for reasonable accommodation. And this opinion, if other courts follow it, will mean an expanding universe — not just of accommodation offers but of accommodation scope. To borrow a phrase from Star Trek, we will be at warp speed.