A recent decision from the First Circuit Court of Appeals highlights a complex, constantly-evolving area of the Americans with Disabilities Act with which employers constantly struggle: the reasonable accommodation process and the often tense, complicated aftermath.
In Wright v. CompUSA, Inc., the First Circuit tackled the issue of whether requesting a reasonable accommodation is a protected activity under the ADA, and thus sufficient to support a subsequent retaliation claim. Mr. Wright had worked at CompUSA’s Brighton, Massachusetts facility as a Direct Sales Manager from 1996 through his termination in August 1998. In Spring 1997, Mr. Wright was diagnosed with Attention Deficit Disorder ("ADD") and began taking Ritalin to control his ADD. In June 1998, a new general manager, Mr. Caughman, was assigned to the Brighton store. The plaintiff claimed that Mr. Caughman’s managerial style caused him severe stress and anxiety, which, in turn, exacerbated his ADD symptoms. As a result, Mr. Wright’s physician recommended that he take a leave of absence from work, which CompUSA granted. While on leave, Wright requested that CompUSA accommodate his disability by either transferring him to another location or allowing him to work at home. CompUSA denied both of these requests.
Upon returning to work in early-August 1998, Mr. Wright presented letters from both his physician and psychiatrist that made specific recommendations concerning how CompUSA could accommodate Mr. Wright’s ADD. The recommended accommodations included allowing Mr. Wright to determine the length of time needed to complete tasks, avoiding early morning meetings, and clarifying work assignments in writing. Mr. Wright claimed that his accommodation requests generally were ignored and his problems with Mr. Caughman’s managerial style persisted.
On August 11th, Mr. Wright was scheduled to attend a meeting for all Direct Sales Managers at CompUSA’s Danvers, Massachusetts facility. Unfortunately, Mr. Wright’s son suffered a head injury on the night of August 10th, and Mr. Wright was forced to accompany him to the hospital on the 11th. As a result, he missed the Danvers meeting. Mr. Wright phoned Mr. Caughman and explain his predicament, but Mr. Caughman told Mr. Wright that he was still expected to travel to Danvers before coming to work at the Brighton store. Instead of traveling to Danvers,
however, Mr. Wright obtained the materials from the Danvers meeting via facsimile. Mr. Wright later arrived at the Brighton facility and attempted to meet with Mr. Caughman to discuss the materials from the Danvers meeting. Rather than discussing the meeting materials with Mr. Wright, however, Mr. Caughman discharged him, claiming that he was insubordinate for failing to proceed to Danvers as instructed.
Mr. Wright filed suit, charging that CompUSA discriminated against him because of his disability and terminated him in retaliation for seeking reasonable accommodations. After the District Court of Massachusetts dismissed his claims on CompUSA’s motion for summary judgment, Mr. Wright appealed.
On appeal, the First Circuit upheld the lower court’s ruling on Mr. Wright’s discrimination claim, concluding that he was not disabled within the meaning of the ADA because his ADD did not substantially limit any of his major life activities. Turning to Mr. Wright’s retaliation claim, the Court noted that regardless of the outcome of his discrimination claim, a charge of retaliatory discharge could still survive if Mr. Wright could raise a genuine issue of material fact that CompUSA’s proffered reasons for discharging him were pretextual.
In analyzing Mr. Wright’s retaliation claim, the Court observed that Mr. Wright was terminated immediately after returning from medical leave and requesting an accommodation for his ADD. Importantly, however, the Court held that the mere act of requesting an accommodation is a "protected activity" under the ADA. Thus, the only remaining issue was whether CompUSA’s proffered reasons for discharging him were pretextual. As to this matter, the Court held that Mr. Caughman’s stated reason for the discharge, insubordination, was undercut by Mr. Wright’s behavior on August 11th, which indicated a "good-faith, successful effort to obtain materials from a meeting that he had already missed while caring for his son." Accordingly, the Court reversed the District Court’s ruling on Mr. Wright’s retaliation claim, and remanded the case for trial.
The Wright case is significant for several reasons. First, it demonstrates that an employee can invoke the ADA’s protections by simply requesting an accommodation for disability. Second, a retaliation claim may still exist, even where the employee cannot make out a failure to accommodate or ADA discrimination claim. Since a request is protected activity under the ADA, any subsequent adverse employment action taken against an employee who has made such a request can expose the employer to a viable retaliation charge. Given that the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission recently reported that retaliation claims have doubled in the past decade, and now account for approximately 25% of charging parties’ complaints, employers must tread carefully when forced with this type of predicament.
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