ADA Does Not Necessitate Transfer for Insomnia
The US 2nd Circuit Court of Appeals
found that the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA), which
requires employers to provide reasonable accommodation to
certain disabled employees, defined as “a physical or
mental impairment that substantially limits one or more of
the major life activities,” did not apply in this
case.
Instead the plaintiff’s disability, insomnia caused
by her post-traumatic stress, did not necessitate a
transfer because the plaintiff failed to argue the
infliction was worsened by working in the subway, according
to a report by the New York Law Journal.
>With the 2-1 decision, the appeals court affirmed the summary judgment granted to the New York City Transit Authority by a lower court judge. There, US District Judge Shira Scheindlin of the US District Court for the Southern District of New York, found there was no connection between the plaintiff’s disability and the accommodation requested.
The Facts
The dispute arose out of a 1995 attack on a token clerk in a Brooklyn station by two assailants who squirted gasoline into the booth and then set it afire, killing the clerk. At the time, Denise Felix was en route to the station where she was assigned as a relief clerk. She saw the smoke-filled station and was told about the attack, resulting in trauma by the realization that she could have been killed. Felix was taken to the hospital were doctors diagnosed her with post-traumatic stress disorder. They specified that she was not to do any subway work, but could do clerical work.
However, the Transit Authority refused Felix’s request to be reassigned to an above-ground job, and instead fired her under a state law that permits termination of civil service employees who are unable to return to work after one year. Felix, who has since died of unrelated causes, sued under the ADA for the Transit Authority’s refusal to accommodate her disability.
Appeals Ruling
Chief Judge John Walker Jr found in
Felix’s case, she was disabled with insomnia caused by her
post-traumatic stress, but this argument did not warrant a
transfer.
Rather, the court noted, “she told the [Transit
Authority] that she could not work in the subway because
she was “terrified of being alone and closed in.” The court
made its ruling even though it acknowledged that both
mental conditions, the insomnia and the fear of being in
the subway, derived from the same traumatic incident.
In dissent, Judge Pierre Leval
questioned the majority’s finding that Felix failed to
show a causal link between her insomnia and the requested
accommodation. To the contrary, he argued, even the
Transit Authority’s own doctors found that going
underground aggravated Felix’s insomnia. Given that,
Leval reasoned, the case should have gone to a jury to
determine whether she was entitled to a reasonable
accommodation of her disability.
The case is Felix v. New York City Transit Authority, 01-7967.