Assistant Principal Raises Failure to Accommodate Issues Following Colon Surgery

 New York, NY (WorkersCompensation.com) – Even when an employee is out of work due to a non-work-related injury, how an employer handles the employee’s return can mean the difference between a successful outcome and costly litigation.

As a school district learned in Einsohn v. New York City Department of Education, No. 19-CV-2660 (E.D.N.Y. 03/30/22), employers must keep in mind the requirements of the Americans with Disabilities Act – and its reasonable accommodation principles – when an employee comes back to work after taking time off due to medical reasons.

Leave, Accommodations

An assistant principal for a New York high school requested time off for “immediate medical care.” His supervisor, the school’s principal granted the request.

Later, the principal and assistant principal met to talk about the assistant principal’s teaching responsibilities for the upcoming school year, with the principal changing the assistant principal’s assignment.

The assistant principal asked to have his teaching load reduced to one class, but that request was apparently denied. Two days later, the assistant principal emailed the principal about a surgery he had scheduled and explained that he would need about six weeks to recover. The school district approved the assistant principals’ request for sick leave.

The surgery, which involved removing a portion of the assistant principal’s colon, caused complications that limited the assistant principal’s ability to walk, bend, and stand. As a result, the assistant principal sought accommodations for his return to work, which included reduced teaching responsibilities and being exempted from hall duty.

The district conducted a medical exam on the assistant principal, and that doctor found that the assistant principal’s limitations were to avoid excessive walking and long-term standing.

Although the district relocated the classrooms in which the assistant principal taught in, it rejected his request to teach one class due to the school’s been short-handed on Spanish teachers. The district also rejected the assistant principal’s request to be relieved from hall duty.

Rejected Requests

Eventually, the assistant principal went back to work with accommodations that included a different classroom and a chair so that he could sit during hall duty. The district contended that the accommodations the assistant principal sought would amount to an undue hardship.

Nonetheless, the assistant principal sued, alleging that the district violated the Americans with Disabilities Act by failing to accommodate his disability.

Under the ADA, an employee can establish a failure to accommodate claim by showing that he could perform the job with a reasonable accommodation and his employer refused to make such an accommodation.

According to the court, a reasonable jury could decide that the accommodations the district provided to the assistant principal were not reasonable. The court pointed out that the district’s accommodations fell short of what the assistant principal’s doctor recommended, noting that hall duty placed the assistant principal at risk of having the wound from his surgery come into contact with the :thousands of students” who moved through the halls during passing times.

Additionally, the court noted that exempting the assistant principal from hall duty would not have automatically presented an undue hardship. In particular, the court explained that the assistant principal’s shift could have been covered by another faculty member, alleviating the district’s safety concerns about having insufficient monitoring.

As a result, the court denied the district’s motion for summary judgment, which allowed the case to go forward.

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