Supreme Court Allows Seniority Systems to Preempt Disability Accommodation Requests

The Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) generally requires employers to provide reasonable accommodations to disabled employees. But how reasonable is an accommodation request when granting it would violate the employer’s seniority system? A sharply divided Supreme Court recently held in US Airways, Inc. v. Barnett that the ADA ordinarily does not require an employer to violate its seniority system as a means of accommodating a disabled employee.

In the Barnett case, an employee who had injured his back while working as a cargo handler transferred to a less demanding mailroom job pursuant to a seniority system that the employer had unilaterally maintained for decades. Under that system, positions were periodically opened to seniority-based employee bidding. Two years after bidding into the mailroom position, the employee discovered that his job was again subject to the bidding process and learned that more senior employees intended to bid on it. As an accommodation for his disability, the employee requested that the employer exclude his position from the bidding process. The employer denied that request, and the employee lost his mailroom job to a more senior worker.

The employee filed suit under the ADA, alleging that his ADA accommodation rights were superior to the seniority system. The employer, however, argued that any accommodation request that violated the rules of a seniority system was automatically unreasonable.

In a 5-4 decision, the Supreme Court rejected the absolute positions of both parties, but held that, as a general rule, a requested accommodation that conflicts with a legitimate seniority system is unreasonable. This ruling applies to both union-negotiated and employer-established seniority systems. The Court based its decision on the fact that seniority systems typically play major roles in employee-management relationships by helping to create and fulfill employees’ expectations of fair and uniform treatment in such matters as job security and advancement opportunities. The Court further concluded that Congress’s intent in creating the ADA was not to destabilize such legitimate seniority systems.

However, the Court recognized that an exception to the general rule exists when an employee can demonstrate "special circumstances" reducing employees’ expectations that the seniority system will be consistently applied. "Special circumstances" may arise, for example, when the employer retains the right to modify the seniority system unilaterally and modifications occur on a relatively frequent basis.

By ruling that the existence of a seniority system will generally support an employer’s denial of a disabled employee’s request for an accommodation that conflicts with the seniority system, the Supreme Court has provided employers with practical guidance in evaluating certain accommodation requests. Employers should remember, however, that a neutral seniority system will not always trump an accommodation request and should consider whether the seniority system has been applied in a consistent and objective manner so that the disabled employee cannot demonstrate "special circumstances" that would make a deviation from the system reasonable.