The employment lawyer’s adage that “no good deed goes unpunished” was thrown into sharp relief by the Sixth Circuit recently when it held that telecommuting — even when offered to other employees — is not necessarily a reasonable accommodation for a disabled employee. Reversing a divided panel, the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals upheld the Eastern District of Michigan Court’s grant of summary judgment to Ford Motor Company (Ford) in a claim of disability discrimination under the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA). E.E.O.C. v. Ford Motor Co., Case No. 12-2484, 2015 WL 1600305 (6th Cir. Apr. 10, 2015).
Background
Jane Harris was a resale buyer who had worked for Ford for over six years. Harris suffered from irritable bowel syndrome, which gave her uncontrollable diarrhea and fecal incontinence. Her job at Ford was “highly interactive” and required her to meet with suppliers at their businesses, and with Ford employees and stampers at the Ford plant. Indeed, because resale buyers needed to meet with stampers often and with short notice, Ford had officed the resale buyers in the same building as its stampers for years. While Harris had been a strong performer when she first started at Ford, in her fourth year of employment, she was rated in the bottom 25% of her peers. In her fifth and sixth years of employment, these same performance issues were still evident, and she was rated in the bottom 10% of her peer group two years in a row. These low ratings were due to her lack of interpersonal skills, her late delivery of work, her lack of concern for quality, and her failure to communicate with suppliers.
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