The U.S. Court of Appeals for the First Circuit held recently that a plaintiff’s request for an additional 12 months of leave as an accommodation under the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) — on top of the five months of time off she had already taken — was effectively a request for indefinite leave, and thus was unreasonable as a matter of law under the ADA.
The plaintiff in Delgado Echevarria v. AstraZeneca, No. 15-2232 (1st Cir. May 2, 2017), suffered from severe anxiety and depression. After taking an approved five-month leave of absence through her employer’s short-term disability program, she requested an additional 12 months of leave to cover an expected continuing period of incapacity.
A federal trial dismissed her ADA lawsuit, concluding among other things that the plaintiff’s proposed accommodation of an additional 12 months of leave was unreasonable and thus was not one that her employer was obligated to consider. In affirming, the First Circuit agreed that the request for additional leave simply was not “facially reasonable,” observing that the “sheer length” of the plaintiff’s leave extension request, when considered alongside the five-month leave she already had been provided, “jumps off the page.”
The First Circuit thus joins every other appeals court to have considered the issue in finding that indefinite leave is not a reasonable accommodation under the ADA.
A copy of the First Circuit’s decision in Delgado is available here.
Members of the Equal Employment Advisory Council (EEAC) can read more here.