Last week, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit upheld a Nebraska district court’s decision that prevented an employer from asserting an undue hardship affirmative defense under the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA). The employer failed to provide sufficient evidence that the requested accommodation would affect its business as a whole.
Under the ADA, employers are required to provide reasonable accommodations to qualified employees with disabilities unless doing so would impose an undue hardship — defined as an action requiring significant difficulty or expense.
Once a plaintiff demonstrates that an accommodation is reasonable on its face, the burden shifts to the employer to establish that specific circumstances make the accommodation unduly burdensome in the context of the particular employee’s role and the company’s overall operations.
Courts typically assess undue hardship by examining factors such as the employer’s size, financial resources and business structure. In general, larger employers with greater resources are expected to accommodate more burdensome requests than smaller employers with more limited means.
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