Can an Employee Get a Reasonable Accommodation to Help Them Commute To or From Work?

Oct 2 2024

Josh Goodbaum: Hi, Amanda.

Amanda DeMatteis: Hi, Josh. What are we gonna talk about today?

Goodbaum: I wanna talk about a client who came to me because she has cataracts. She has an eye condition that prevents her from driving safely at night. Now, she can still get to work. She can still do her work during her normal working hours. But until she has the surgery that she’s going to have soon, during the winter, when it gets dark early, she can’t get home safely. And, so she’s hoping that her employer will let her leave work early and work from home or maybe start her day earlier. And she’s wondering: Do any of our disability discrimination laws protect her? What’s your advice?

DeMatteis: Well, sure. What your client needs is a reasonable accommodation under either the Americans with Disabilities Act or the Connecticut Fair Employment Practices Act. We’ve talked about reasonable accommodations a ton before, and we’ll give you some good, helpful advice here on a situation similar to the one that you’ve just proposed.

Three key takeaways for this.

Number one: Ask. If you need a reasonable accommodation at work, no one’s going to grant it to you without you making that request first. So, go to your employer. Make sure that they know that the need for this reasonable accommodation is tied to a disability. They may ask you for medical certification from your doctor to, of course, substantiate the fact that you are, in fact, suffering from this disability and you should provide that to them. You don’t know the answer to the question unless you ask. So, make sure you do that.

Number two: Be really specific in what you are looking for. The details matter significantly. So, Josh, you mentioned two things that are important. First, this might be a temporary accommodation because this potential client is going to have cataract surgery, and once the cataract surgery is accomplished, the need for the reasonable accommodation will be gone. Second, this is only something that this potential client needs at night and during the winter months. So, that limits even the duration over the course of a year that this accommodation might be necessary. That puts more pressure on the employer to say, “Hmm, maybe we should, in fact, grant this reasonable accommodation request because what is the hardship?”

One of the questions that we’re always looking for in these accommodation requests is what is the undue hardship that the employer might face in granting this reasonable accommodation? And that burden is on the employer to substantiate to us what the undue hardship is. The more specific you are in your request with exactly what you need, the harder you are going to make it for the employer to reach that burden of proving that there is, in fact, an undue hardship in granting it and allowing you in this particular situation to get home from work safely after a day’s work.

Third takeaway is: The case law here is a bit split. For a period of time, there were these groups of commuter cases which said, “No, an employer doesn’t need to provide a reasonable accommodation. Getting to work is on the employee, not the employer.” And there was a flip side of that, which said, “Well, commuting is part of, of course, how someone can accomplish their job. So, that’s an accommodation that we should look to.”

The Seventh Circuit gave us a little bit more clarity on that and looked at whether or not this was a time-limited request for an accommodation, as we spoke about, or whether or not it was simply a shift change. Maybe we could change this woman’s shift until the cataract surgery is accomplished and then put her back to her original shift and that doesn’t prevent an undue hardship.

Critical information is all in the details. So, you need to be as specific as you possibly can. Make sure you seek out that accommodation and make it as hard on the employer as possible to justify that there is an undue hardship on them for granting this reasonable accommodation request.

Goodbaum: Really good information, Amanda. And of course, if you ask, even if your employer doesn’t think that they are required to give you a particular accommodation, they still can. They might just decide you’re a really valuable employee, they want to accommodate you, and you’re able to work it out without any lawyers, without involving the justice system at all.

So, hopefully that’s helpful to you. Thank you for watching, and we’ll see you next time.

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josh goodbaum discussing reasonable accommodations for work commutes

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Garrison, Levin-Epstein, Fitzgerald & Pirrotti, P.C.

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