Samper v. Providence St. Vincent Med. Ctr. - 675 F.3d 1233 (9th Cir. 2012)

Rule:

It is a rather common-sense idea that if one is not able to be at work, one cannot be a qualified individual. Both before and since the passage of the Americans with Disabilities Act, a majority of circuits have endorsed the proposition that in those jobs where performance requires attendance at the job, irregular attendance compromises essential job functions. Attendance may be necessary for a variety of reasons. Sometimes, it is required simply because the employee must work as "part of a team." Other jobs require face-to-face interaction with clients and other employees. Yet other jobs require the employee to work with items and equipment that are on site.

Facts:

Plaintiff, a neo-natal intensive care unit nurse, sought an accommodation from defendant employer, that would have allowed her an unspecified number of unplanned absences from her job. She wanted to opt out of defendant’s attendance policy, which sanctioned five unplanned absences of unlimited duration as well as other permitted absences. Plaintiff sued defendant, alleging, among other claims, a violation of the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) due to failure to accommodate. The district court granted summary judgment in defendant’s favor, reasoning that since plaintiff could not adhere to defendant's attendance policy, she was unqualified for her job. Plaintiff appealed.

Issue:

Did the district court err in granting summary judgment in defendant’s favor? 

Answer:

No.

Conclusion:

The record showed that plaintiff's regular, predictable presence to perform specialized, life-saving work in a hospital context was even more essential than in other cases which held that attendance was an essential job function. As the evidence easily established, plaintiff's engagement with patients was far more direct than that of a medical transcriptionist—although attendance might not have been necessary to transcribe details regarding medical treatment, in the context of a neonatal nurse, it was necessary to provide treatment in the first place. Not only was physical attendance required in the neo-natal care unit to provide critical care, the hospital needed to populate the difficult-to-staff unit with nurses who could guarantee some regularity in their attendance. An accommodation that would have allowed plaintiff to simply miss work whenever she felt she needed to and apparently for so long as she felt she needed to was, as a matter of law, not reasonable. Plaintiff essentially asked for a reasonable accommodation that exempted her from an essential function. Her performance was predicated on her attendance. Accordingly, the court affirmed the judgment of the district court.