Disability Discrimination: Nurse Did Request Accommodation, Could Sue, Court Says

Disability Discrimination: Nurse Did Request Accommodation, Could Sue, Court Says

Legal Eagle Eye Newsletter for the Nursing Profession

August 1998

Quick Summary: The nurse was entitled to reasonable accommodation after her psychologist wrote a letter to her supervisors stating his diagnosis of a severe depressive disorder due to marital dysfunction and job stress.

The letter requested four weeks medical leave for intensive outpatient psychotherapy after which the letter stated the nurse would be able to return to work.

No attempt at reasonable accommodation was made. UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT, FLORIDA, 1997.

The United States District Court for the Southern District of Florida indicated the letter the nurse’s psychologist wrote to her supervisors was not as clear as the court would have liked in expressing which major activities of life were substantially affected by the nurse’s psychological impairment. Nevertheless, the court concluded there was sufficient evidence the nurse had a disability as defined by the Americans With Disabilities Act to permit her to sue for disability discrimination over her termination.

The court ruled the nurse adequately informed her employer of her disability and requested reasonable accommodation, both of which by law are the employee’s responsibility before the employee can invoke legal protection from disability discrimination, when the letter from her psychologist reached her supervisors.

The decision had already been made by her supervisors to terminate the nurse for inadequate job performance stemming from her depressive illness, but that decision had not been communicated to the nurse when the letter arrived informing the employer in effect the nurse considered herself to have a disability and wished to request accommodation.

An employee cannot wait until after being terminated to inform the employer of a disability and to request reasonable accommodation, the court pointed out.

However, in this case the nurse did notify her employer she believed she had a disability and needed accommodation, when she sensed she was going to be terminated, but before actually being terminated. This was timely notice, the court determined. Fromm-Vane v. Medical Center, 995 F. Supp. 1471 (S.D. Fla., 1997).