An Administrator's Guide to California Private School Law

Chapter 9 – Interactive Process: Employees and Students

on the phone speaking with the public. Because the employee’s mental illness was brought on and exacerbated by phone contact with the public, she could not perform the essential functions of her job. A customer service representative who was unable to adequately handle telephone calls from customers because of panic attacks caused by post-traumatic stress disorder was not a qualified individual under the ADA. Handling the calls was an essential function of the job, and eliminating telephone work would not have been a reasonable accommodation. 1466 A food server who suffered a self-described “meltdown” when the restaurant became busy could not perform the essential functions of her job. 1467 The food server suffered panic attacks, headache and fear whenever the restaurant changed the food ingredients, portion sizes and prices she was required to describe to customers. She suffered these same effects when the restaurant became busy. The court concluded that describing menu items and performing her duties, regardless of whether her work station was busy or slow, were essential functions of the food server’s job. This food server’s inability to perform these essential functions of her job rendered her unqualified for relief under the ADA. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, the decisions of which apply to California schools, held, in Samper v. Providence St. Vincent Medical Center , that attendance was an essential function of a nurse position in a hospital’s neo-natal intensive care unit. 1468 A neo-natal nurse was diagnosed with fibromyalgia, which caused her to be absent frequently, even though she worked only part-time. The hospital agreed to a highly flexible accommodation: the nurse was allowed to call in when having a bad health day, and to move her shift to another day in the week without finding someone to cover her shift. When her attendance problems persisted, the hospital agreed not to schedule her two shifts per week on consecutive days. When her attendance still did not improve, she requested an exemption from the attendance policy altogether. The hospital eventually terminated her employment. The nurse sued the Hospital for failing to reasonably accommodate her in violation of the ADA. The hospital argued that she could not perform an essential function of the job—meeting the attendance policy—with or without a reasonable accommodation because her attendance problems persisted despite the accommodations the hospital had offered. The court stated that attendance can be an essential job function if: (1) the employee must work as part of a team; (2) the job requires face-to-face interaction with clients and other employees; or (3) the job requires the employee to work with items and equipment that are on site. Here, a nurse’s attendance is an essential job function for all three reasons. The nurse’s job required teamwork with other nurses, face-to-face interaction with co-workers and patients, and access to medical equipment. Moreover, the job description for the position emphasized the need for regular attendance and punctuality, particularly because it was very difficult to find replacements for these specialized positions. The court found that the nurse’s request to be absent as much as she wanted was not a reasonable accommodation that would allow her to perform her essential job functions, but rather it would exempt her from the essential job function of regular attendance.

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