Clark v. Charter Communications, LLC - Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals
Facts: Danielle Clark ("Clark") worked at Charter Communications, LLC ("Charter") as a specialist. Charter, a telecommunications service provider, had approximately fifty specialists to monitor computer displays which tracked the network's status in real time. When a system outage was displayed, a specialist would immediately dispatch a technician to the location. Specialists would then monitor the progress of the technician's work and if the technician's work exceeded a certain timeframe, the specialist would notify supervisors. Specialists at Charter were also required to monitor an e-mail account, respond to customer problems or questions, and monitor a phone line to communicate with technicians in the field. Oftentimes the specialists would handle each responsibility alone on their shift.
Beginning with her employment in fall of 2015, Clark would fall asleep. She was given time off to seek medical testing in which it was discovered she suffered from narcolepsy. Clark therefore had problems staying awake during her shift and would fall asleep, often while surveilling Charter's network and during coordination with technician repairs. Clark also was known to fall asleep, wake up, and not realize she had been asleep. She also was reported to have fallen asleep while on calls with technicians in the field.
Clark's supervisors worked with her to mitigate the narcolepsy while she was at work. Clark was given an additional break to take naps between shifts, excused from randomly assigned night shift (on the grounds that narcolepsy made her unable to work at night), and the ability to take two days of leave every month to attend a doctor's appointment.
However, Clark continued to fall asleep during her shifts. After experiencing a less than hospitable attitude from her co-workers, Clark e-mailed her supervisors but alleged that they failed to respond sufficiently. Clark alleged that she received feedback and "coaching" less often than other co-workers and said this exascerbated her narcolepsy.
In October of 2016, Clark was notified she had nearly exhausted her Family Medical Leave Act leave, but Charter would allow her to take unpaid leave to address her narcolepsy. Clark was placed on leave in November of 2016 with a return date for a month later. During this period, Charter agreed to several extensions of Clark's leave, with her to ultimately return to work in March of 2017. However, in January of 2017, Clark filed a charge of discrimination and received notice of her right to sue in March. Clark proceeded to file suit against Charter and alleged disability discrimination, harassment, failure to accommodate, failure to engage in the interactive process, and retaliation in violation of the Americans with Disabilities Act ("ADA") and the Texas Commission on Human Rights Act. The District Court granted Charter's motion for summary judgment and Clark appealed.
Holding: (Note, this case brief analyzes only the "qualified individual” portion of Clark's claim.)
As many readers might know, the ADA prohibits an employer from discriminating against a qualified individual on the basis of a disability. In the absence of direct evidence of discrimination, a claimant "must establish: (1) [she] has a disability, or was regarded as disabled; (2) was qualified for the job; and (3) was subject to an adverse employment decision on account of [her] disability."
For Clark to establish all three prongs, she was required to show she was a "qualified individual" under the second prong. To meet this burden, Clark was requited to establish she could "perform the essential functions of the job in spite of [her] disability" or that she could do so with an identified "reasonable accommodation of [her] disability." A disability discrimination claim under the Texas statute tracks the ADA and courts "appl[y] the legal standards for the ADA" to such state claims.
In this case, Clark had conceded in her deposition that her physicians advised her she would continue to fall asleep at unpredictable times during her shift and would require unplanned ten minute naps at unknown frequencies throughout the workday. Clark argued that staying awake was not an essential function of her job and that "speedy and accurate performance...are admirable and desirable qualities" in a specialist but not essential ones. The Court of Appeals was unswayed, finding no support for Clark's claim. The Court further noted that Clark failed to raise any genuine issue of material fact regarding whether a specialist could fulfill her tasks when she might sleep through a time sensitive network alert or an urgent call from a technician addressing an outage.
Judgment: The Court of Appeals affirmed the granting of summary judgment to the employer on the grounds that the employee could not establish that her failure to stay awake, because of narcolepsy, still meant she was a "qualified individual" under the ADA.
The Takeaway: The rest of the Court's opinion here is worth reading, but I think the most noteworthy part had to do with the Court's discussion of whether an employee that routinely and unpredictably fell asleep at work, because of narcolepsy, could still be a "qualified individual" under the ADA. As the Court noted here, based upon the facts in the record, it was apparent that a specialist such as Clark needed to be alert (or at least awake) while on the job to effectively do the work. Without being able to meet that minimum standard, I think the Court was correct to reach the conclusion that falling asleep, napping, etc. meant that Clark was not a "qualified individual" for purposes of the specialist position.
Majority Opinion Judge: Per curiam decision
Date: June 19, 2019
Opinion: http://www.ca5.uscourts.gov/opinions/unpub/18/18-11492.0.pdf
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