A federal appeals court on Wednesday upheld a $92,000 verdict for an in-house lawyer whose request to work from home for 10 weeks while on bed rest due to pregnancy complications was denied.

A three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit based in Cincinnati rejected arguments by the Memphis Light, Gas and Water Division that attorney Andrea Mosby-Meachem was not entitled to telework because in-person attendance was an essential function of her job.

Circuit Judge Julia Smith Gibbons wrote the opinion.

Specifically, the appeals court upheld the lower court's denial of the public utility's request for judgment as a matter of law or, alternatively, a new trial. It also upheld the trial court's award of about $18,000 in back pay, in addition to compensatory damages.

“Mosby-Meachem presented sufficient evidence supporting a finding that she could perform all the essential functions of her job remotely for 10 weeks,” according to the 15-page opinion.

“For example, several MLG&W employees as well as outside counsel who worked with Mosby-Meachem testified that they felt she could perform all essential functions during the 10-week period working from home.”

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A spokesperson for MLG&W did not immediately return an emailed request for comment on Thursday. Mosby-Meachem could not be reached for comment, but one of her attorneys, Adam Hansen of Apollo Law in Minneapolis, said in an email that he and his client were “thrilled” by the court's decision.

“Courts in the past have been hostile to claims by factory, retail and service workers who have asked to work from home because, in those jobs, physical presence is typically essential. But a growing number of workers in today's information economy work with their heads more than their hands,” he wrote in the email.

“The purpose of the Americans with Disabilities Act is keep people on the job–not push them to the margins of economic life. Allowing disabled workers to remain engaged in their work through reasonable telecommuting arrangements vindicates that important goal. We're pleased the court saw things the same way.”

According to the opinion, Mosby-Meachem had worked at MLG&W as an in-house labor, employment and workers' compensation lawyer since 2005. In 2008, the then-new general counsel implemented a strict policy requiring all of the attorneys in her department to be in the office working from 8:30 a.m. to 5 p.m. Monday through Friday.

The policy, the court noted, was not strictly enforced, however, and employees often telecommuted. Mosby-Meachem herself worked from home for two weeks in 2012 while recovering from neck surgery, “during which time she appears to have adequately performed her duties to the satisfaction of MLG&W,” the Sixth Circuit opinion's said.

In January 2013, following three prior miscarriages, Mosby-Meachem's doctors discovered a problem during her subsequent pregnancy that required hospitalization, surgery and 10 weeks of modified bed rest.

The company's ADA Committee denied Mosby-Meachem's request that she be allowed to work those 10 weeks from home or the hospital, even though the request was accompanied by supporting documents from her doctor. The denial, according to the Sixth Circuit's opinion, was based on the determination that physical presence was an essential function of Mosby-Meachem's job and that teleworking created concerns about maintaining confidentiality—a conclusion that the jury found violated the ADA.

In addition to the testimony of the MLG&W employees and outside counsel who worked with Mosby-Meachem saying that she could perform all of her essential duties from outside the office, the Sixth Circuit relied on other factors in upholding the jury's finding. For example, Mosby-Meachem presented “uncontested testimony” that she had never tried cases or taken depositions of witnesses in the eight years she had worked at MLG&W, the court said.

In addition, the job description on which the utility relied was based on a 20-year-old questionnaire that did not reflect changes in the job that have resulted from technological advances since that time, rather than a 2010 questionnaire Mosby-Meachem herself had completed before any of the events giving rise to the lawsuit occurred, according to the court.

In a blog post on the website of the labor-and-employment-focused magazine, Workforce, contributing editor Jon Hyman, a partner in the labor and employment practice at Meyers, Roman, Friedberg & Lewis in Cleveland, said that this case is important because it “defined the parameters of when an employee's job [qualifies] for remote work as a reasonable accommodation” under the ADA.

“Telecommuting can be an appropriate reasonable accommodation, depending on the facts and circumstances of an employee's job, and whether actual in-person attendance is required, or merely preferred,” he said.

Another lesson for employers, Hyman said, is that, “prior successful implementation of the requested accommodation makes it difficult for an employer to argue its lack of reasonableness.”

Michael Tauer, Saul Belz and Miska Shaw of Glankler Brown in Memphis, Tennessee, represented MLG&W in this case.

William Ryan and Janelle Osowski of Donati Law in Memphis also represented Mosby-Meachem in addition to Hansen.