Tenth Circuit previews likely ruling when employers require return-to-work following pandemic

A recent Tenth Circuit decision previews courts’ likely analysis when employers begin requiring workers to return to the workplace following the eventual end of the pandemic. In the case, the Court held that making a “transitional duty” permanent is not a reasonable accommodation — in other words is not required by the ADA — especially where it would eliminate an essential function of the worker’s position.

The Court used the phrase “transitional duty” to refer to the employer-prison’s temporary assignment of a disabled worker to relatively light duty that consisted of “sedentary” tasks in the “control room.” The prison provided the transitional duty only as a temporary accommodation of his arthritis pending hip surgery after which he was expected to return to his regular duties as a correctional officer. It was undisputed that the regular duties of a correctional officer included the ability to defend oneself, which he could not do absent successful recovery from surgery. When the temporary transitional duty ended and he was still unable to work as a correctional officer, his employment was terminated. He sued claiming that the ADA required the prison to convert the transitional duty into his permanent assignment. The prison responded and the Tenth Circuit agreed that making his temporary accommodation permanent would not have been a reasonable accommodation, in other words, was not required under the ADA. His job was to work as a correctional officer; the transitional duty was merely a temporary effort to respond to his arthritis and need for surgery.

Just as having permitted that correctional officer to work in the control room was merely a temporary response to the circumstances at the time, one that the ADA did not require to be made permanent, so, now in the context of the pandemic, allowing employees to work remotely, temporarily during the pandemic, does not open the door to ADA lawsuits claiming to make remote-work permanent, at least where attendance is itself an essential function of the job. Readers are reminded that the EEOC similarly recently opined that temporarily eliminating an essential function, in response to specific circumstances such as the pandemic, does not require that elimination to be made permanent under the ADA (or Title VII).

Source: Mannan v. Colorado, 2020 BL 493234, 2020 Us App Lexis 39822 (10th Cir. 12/18/20).