‘I Just Need 1 Hour’: Employer Denies Small Ask, Pays Big

A federal appeals court upheld a jury verdict against an employer that denied an employee permission to move her start time back by one hour to accommodate her disability.

A jury determined that the employer denied the employee a reasonable accommodation that she was entitled to receive under the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA). The reviewing court found that the jury permissibly reached that result.

The appeals court affirmed an award of monetary relief, and it also found that the trial court wrongfully denied a request for injunctive relief. The trial court was instructed to reconsider that request.

Employer Hires Sales Associate

Marlo Spaeth, who has Down syndrome, worked as a sales associate at a Wisconsin Wal-Mart location for more than 15 years. She began her tenure there in 1999, and she was assigned to tasks that included folding towels and tidying items in the store’s aisles.

She worked from 12 p.m. to 4 p.m. for up to four days a week.

Spaeth does not drive, and she relied on public transportation to get to work. In addition, she is unable to stand for more than four hours at a time. Her initial work schedule was constructed with those limitations in mind.

Spaeth’s guardian testified that Spaeth does not do well with change and is strongly married to routine. She took the same bus to work each day and arrived at the same time after her shift at home, where she watched the same television shows each night.

She was also slow to adapt to new tasks at work.

Employee Earns Positive Reviews

Despite her disability-related limitations, Spaeth consistently received positive reviews and steady raises from her employer. None of her reviews mentioned attendance-related issues.

The smooth ride ended in November of 2014. That’s when Wal-Mart told its managers to stop making manual adjustments to computer-generated staff work schedules unless they had a business justification for doing so. Managers lost their discretion to freely alter schedules, as Spaeth’s managers had done to maintain her strict 12 to 4 shift. Instead, such changes became subject to a strict approval process.

Under the new system, if an employee’s declared availability did not match the computer-generated schedule, they were assigned no shifts at all.

That’s what happened to Spaeth, and when she complained she was told she would need to work a shift that started at 1 p.m. and ended at 5:30 p.m. Spaeth accepted, but apparently begrudgingly: Her guardian later explained that Spaeth tends to avoid conflict, and her expert witness testified that people with Down syndrome don’t like conflict and try to please others.

Trouble With Change to Schedule

Spaeth did not do well with the change to her schedule. She sometimes left work early, and she even missed some shifts entirely.

Her guardian asked a Wal-Mart personnel coordinator to give Spaeth back her old hours, but the store stuck with the new 1 to 5:30 shift.

Unable to satisfactorily work under the new hours, Spaeth accumulated enough attendance infractions to be dismissed from employment.

The EEOC sued the employer under the ADA, accusing it of declining to provide Spaeth the reasonable accommodation of adjusting her work schedule to accommodate her disability.

A jury found in her favor, saying Spaeth should get $150,000 in compensatory damages and a stunning $125 million in punitive damages.

Because the ADA has a damages cap of $300,000 for employers of Wal-Mart’s size, the trial court reduced the punitive damages award to $150,000. After tacking on amounts for back pay, interest and an amount related to tax consequences, it set the total award at $419,662.59.

The trial court also granted the EEOC’s request that Spaeth be reinstated and that it contact her guardian regarding any further issues. But it denied the agency’s request for injunctive relief that was designed to prevent a recurrence of what happened to Spaeth. Spaeth declined to go back to work at the store.

Both sides appealed.

Appeals Court Backs Jury

The appeals court rejected Wal-Mart’s argument that it was not aware that Spaeth’s request for a schedule change was related to her disability. The evidence was sufficient for the jury to find that Wal-Mart was made aware of the link between her disability and her request, it said. There was no dispute that managers knew Spaeth has Down syndrome, and her guardian expressly told them that Spaeth was having problems with the new schedule because of her disability.

The employer never asked for medical documentation supporting the request, it noted, and Spaeth was not obligated to volunteer such information.

“If Wal-Mart needed information from Spaeth’s physician supporting the requested accommodation, it was obligated to ask for it,” the court said.

The evidence was also sufficient to support the punitive damages award, the court determined. Evidence that it declined to engage in the interactive process contemplated by the ADA was consistent with a finding that it was recklessly indifferent to her rights under the statute, it said.

The court also declined to reduce the compensatory damages award of $150,000.

Finally, the appeals court instructed the lower court to further evaluate the EEOC’s request for the additional injunctive relief it sought.

Key Takeaways for Employers

The decision holds valuable lessons for employers about the ADA’s reasonable accommodation requirements.

Among them:

• Don’t dismiss requests for accommodation out of hand. That’s exactly what the court said Wal-Mart did here. The ADA requires employers to take a hard look at whether a requested accommodation is workable – and to examine whether there are other feasible alternatives.
• Don’t expect medical documentation. The EEOC has advised that when an employee’s disability or need for a disability-related job accommodation is not obvious, it may ask the employee for reasonable medical documentation supporting a reasonable accommodation request. But that doesn’t mean all requests for accommodation need to come with medical documentation – and certainly doesn’t mean an employee must present such documentation when the employer has not asked for it.
• Don’t be a slave to routine, even when that routine makes things more convenient for you as an employer. Here, Wal-Mart utilized a computerized schedule generator that undoubtedly made things more convenient overall. But such convenience must sometimes yield to the ADA obligation to provide reasonable accommodation.

EEOC v. Wal-Mart Stores East, L.P., No. 22-3202 (7th Cir. 8/27/24).