What is the Essential Functions Test Under the ADA?

Let’s say that you have an employee who comes to you with a disability and requests an accommodation. You try, but the employee says that you didn’t do enough to accommodate him or her, and you end up being sued for violating the Americans With Disabilities Act (ADA).

It may seem like a tough case for you. But many employers don’t realize that they have an important defense at their disposal: the essential functions test.

What is the Essential Functions Test?

The ADA does not just say that you have to provide a disabled employee accommodations. It only requires you to do so if those accommodations would allow the employee to do their job, or a substantially similar job—that is, the essential functions of their job.

But sometimes that’s not possible. Sometimes, there are no accommodations that can be made—technology or medicine just doesn’t exist to allow the worker to do what he needs to do in order to do the job, or else, even with all the possible accommodations the employee could not perform the essential functions of the job.

As a simple example, imagine a technician that works on fine wiring and small electronics, and that employee has a disability that causes the employee’s hands to shake uncontrollably, making it difficult if not impossible to work on the fine wiring. Assume there is no medicine the employee can take to remedy the disability.

You can’t change the wiring or the size of the wires. The job requires fine motor skills. There is no equipment the employee can use to handle wiring or fine, small electronics. So, arguably, even with whatever accommodations you could give to the employee, he or she still could not do the job.

What is an Essential Function?

There is often debate over what an “essential function” of a job is, since many people have jobs where they do multiple things, or have multiple responsibilities. The law doesn’t provide much guidance, only saying that an essential function is one that is fundamental to, or goes to the heart of the job, and which is not just marginal.

Is the task that the employee cannot do because of disability, one that the employee was hired to do? Is it the core purpose of the job itself? If so, it is likely essential.

This inquiry often requires analysis of the job market, and the job descriptions of particular jobs that are used in the workforce. So, evidence would need to show that other similar jobs require the same tasks as the task that you are claiming is an essential function, and which cannot be done by the employee, even with the accommodations.

Courts may also look at your corporate documents, if you have job descriptions, to see what you define as the skills or tasks necessary to do the job. This is another reason to make sure your company handbooks and manuals are up to date.

Get help with your employee legal matters. Call the West Palm Beach commercial litigation lawyers at Pike & Lustig today.

Source:

adata.org/faq/what-are-essential-functions-job