7th Circuit Affirms Lower-Court’s Award of Damages, Directs Court to Reconsider Injunctive Relief Against Walmart After it Terminated an Employee Without Considering Her Need for Accommodation
In E.E.O.C. v. Walmart Stores East, L.P., No. 22-3202 (7th Cir. 2024), the 7th Circuit Court of Appeals took up the question of whether a change to an employee’s schedule from 12-4 to 1-5:30 which resulted in a number of absences by the employee violated her rights under the Americans with Disabilities Act (“ADA”).
In the case, the employee, who was diagnosed Down Syndrome, undeniably struggled with a company policy that resulted in an hours change for her position from 12-4 to the new schedule of 1-5:30. An expert testified that routine was important for people with Down Syndrome, and that the disruption to the routine caused her confusion and was difficult for her to follow. Company officials acknowledged that over the employee’s 15-year work history, she had never had poor attendance until the change to schedule.
But the company nonetheless dismissed her after 17 separate incidents of attendance failures, which were caused by her clocking out early. When reviewed pursuant to the company’s own processes, internal officials at the company indicated they felt they had been too lenient on the employee when the company’s policy would result in termination following 7 absences.
Walmart argued that it was unaware of the need for accommodation, and that to the extent it was made aware (by family of the employee who asked for Walmart to reinstate her after termination and accommodate her disability by reverting her schedule to 12-4), such awareness occurred after the employee had been terminated. But a jury found Walmart aware of the disability, that it could have accommodated her without undue hardship, and awarded her $150,000 in compensatory damages and $125 million in punitive damages, which amount the court reduced to $150,000 to comply with the ADA damages cap, and attached interest and taxing remedies as well. Walmart appealed.
The Appellate Court affirmed the lower court’s judgment, finding that the need for accommodation in light of 1) the employee’s known disability (noting, in particular, the employee’s own notation of a need for limited scheduling on her availability form) and 2) the employee’s documented difficulty complying with the new schedule were sufficient to confer on the employer sufficient knowledge of a need for accommodation. The Court pointed out that even “A reasonably astute manager, having in mind the prior challenges [the employee] had experienced in handling new duties, however straightforward they were, might have considered whether her inability to adapt to the new schedule could be due to her Down syndrome.” Moreover, the Court was distinctly unconvinced by Walmart’s argument that the severing of the employment relationship terminated the duty to consider accommodation, noting the fact that discussions about the need for accommodation pre-dated termination, and that they were made aware upon termination about the connection:
The jury also could have found that any doubts on this score were resolved when [family], both before and after […] discharge, expressly advised Wal-Mart managers that [the Employee] could not adapt to the new schedule because of her Down syndrome. And of course, following the discharge, [family] expressly invoked [the employee]’s rights under the ADA and asserted that the company had failed to reasonably accommodate [the employee]’s disability by refusing to reinstate her original work schedule.”
The Court, however, did not find damages to be the end of the review, and ordered the lower court to reconsider injunctive relief to require Walmart to comply with the law. The Court was unconvinced by Walmart’s comprehensive non-discrimination policy, explaining:
(1) store personnel utterly failed to treat the request as a request for an accommodation and initiate the constructive, give-and-take process that the ADA, the case law, and Wal-Mart’s own policies require, even after [family] alerted store managers to the connection between [the employee]’s disability and her difficulties in complying with her new work schedule; and (2) Wal-Mart managers were evidently under the impression that long-term schedule modifications could not be granted to an employee, which arguably was consistent with the company-wide directive that was issued to managers in 2014 that the computer-generated schedules not be modified except for business reasons.
While the Court acknowledged some of the issues were unique to the employee, the managers who implemented policies, correctly or incorrectly, did so in a manner that did not extend the employee the full protection of the law, and remained, as of the decision, still employed with Walmart (with the capacity to implement those same improper rules into the future).
The case emphasizes the employer’s duty to accommodate an employee who demonstrates disability, and to ask questions to better understand the need for accommodation where an employee, particularly one with a long employment history, fails to comply with company rules.