California Court of Appeal Upholds Adverse Employment Action Where Employee Unable to Perform Essential Job Functions
Topics: Court Decisions, Employee Hiring, Discipline & Termination, Employee Leave
This month, the California Court of Appeal affirmed the trial court’s grant of summary adjudication to the employer in a disability discrimination case alleging violations of the Fair Employment and Housing Act (FEHA). The opinion emphasizes that an adverse employment action may be appropriate where an employee’s disability prevents the performance of essential job functions.
In Miller v. California Dept. of Corrections and Rehabilitation (CDCR), the Plaintiff, a correctional officer, was injured in June 2016 due to a slip and fall while working. Plaintiff received medical clearance to return to work subject to “permanent work restrictions,” which were inconsistent with the essential duties of a correctional officer, including restrictions on kneeling, squatting, and twisting. Based on these restrictions, Plaintiff requested that CDCR file disability retirement benefits on her behalf which the agency declined because it had not exhausted all potential options to return her to work. CDCR offered to “medically demote” plaintiff to an alternative position that would accommodate her work restrictions, while retaining the right to reinstatement to her original position if her condition improved, but she declined. Instead, the Plaintiff informed CDCR that she recently started mental health treatment that prevented her from returning to work, and remained on an unpaid leave of absence since then.
Plaintiff asserted several causes of action for violations of FEHA, including (1) disability discrimination; (2) failure to engage in the interactive process; (3) failure to provide reasonable accommodation; (4) failure to prevent discrimination; and (5) retaliation. The trial court granted CDCR’s motion for summary adjudication on each cause of action, which the Court of Appeal wholly affirmed.
Disability Discrimination
The Court of Appeal found that evidence of Plaintiff’s permanent work restrictions and inability to return to work due to her mental health was sufficient to show that CDCR was permitted to take an adverse employment action against her since she could not perform the essential functions of her position as a correctional officer. Plaintiff’s only rebuttal was that CDCR allegedly failed to engage in the interactive process and failed to provide her with a reasonable accommodation. The court rejected this argument because even if CDCR did fail to engage in the interactive process or fail to provide a reasonable accommodation, “this would still not compel the conclusion that CDCR is liable for disability discrimination” because “refusal to participate in the interactive process or refusal to provide a reasonable accommodation ‘do not constitute “adverse employment actions” in the context of a claim of discrimination.’” (quoting Brown v. Los Angeles Unified School Dist. (2021) 60 Cal.App.5th 1092, 1106) Therefore, “an employer may be liable for the failure to engage in the interactive process or failure to provide a reasonable accommodation, without being liable for discrimination.”
Failure to Provide Reasonable Accommodation
On appeal, Plaintiff claimed that CDCR could have but refused to provide her with an accommodation in the form of disability retirement benefits. The Court of Appeal denied this argument, explaining that “disability retirement . . . is not a reasonable accommodation.” The court compared the definition of a reasonable accommodation under FEHA (an adjustment to the workplace that enables the employee to perform the essential functions of the job) with the express statutory purpose of disability retirement (to permit a disabled employee to be replaced by more capable employees), and concluded that interpreting disability retirement as a reasonable accommodation would be “directly contrary” to the purpose of FEHA, “which is to encourage employers to pursue all reasonably available means to facilitate a disabled employee's return to work.”
Failure to Engage in the Interactive Process
CDCR met its burden for summary adjudication by showing that the interactive process eventually resulted in an offer of a reasonable accommodation in the form of a medical demotion to an alternative position and by showing no reasonable accommodation was available with respect to Plaintiff’s mental health condition because of her representations that she could not return to work while receiving treatment. On appeal, Plaintiff argued that CDCR’s actions during the interactive process were conducted in bad faith by “failing to affirmatively assist plaintiff in identifying more potential accommodations, placing plaintiff in an informational and negotiating disadvantage, and failing to seriously consider the extent of available accommodations.” The court held that, even if CDCR somehow acted in bad faith, summary adjudication is not precluded where there is no evidence that a reasonable accommodation was available to offer. “[R]egardless of how deficient an employer’s participation in the interactive process may be,” an employee suffers no injury under FEHA unless the employee “identifies a reasonable accommodation that was objectively available during the interactive process.”
This opinion provides some key takeaways for employers: (1) failure to engage in the interactive process and failure to provide a reasonable accommodation do not necessarily provide a basis for a disability discrimination claim; (2) failure to offer disability retirement is not a reasonable accommodation; and (3) offering a “medical demotion” may be a reasonable accommodation where the employee cannot perform essential job functions.
If you have any questions about this blog post, please contact the author, Taylor Wendland, or your favorite CDF attorney.
