The California Court of Appeal, Third Appellate District, in Bagatti v. Department of Rehabilitation, 2002 WL 485836, allowed an employee to proceed with her lawsuit which claimed she sustained personal injuries because her employer failed to reasonably accommodate her disability.
As a result of severe polio and post polio syndrome, Employee, Marilyn Bagatti, is disabled and unable to walk long distances. Due to her impaired ability to move around her work site as needed and transport herself from her car to her work station, Employee asked Employer, the California Department of Rehabilitation, to reasonably accommodate her disability by providing her with a form of motorized transportation and with hand railings or chairs along the hallways of the job site. Employee claims that, as a result of Employer’s refusal to reasonably accommodate her disability, she suffered a work-related injury that prevented her from returning to work.
Employee sued Employer under California’s Fair Employment and Housing Act (FEHA), claiming Employer failed to provide reasonable accommodation. Employee asked the trial court to award her damages for pain and suffering, physical injury, emotional distress, and lost wages. The trial court dismissed Employee’s lawsuit and she appealed.
Pursuant to Government Code Section 12926, part of the FEHA, reasonable accommodation of a disability may include (1) making facilities used by employees readily accessible to and usable by disabled individuals, and (2) acquiring or modifying equipment or devices. The Court of Appeal agreed with Employee that her requests for motorized transportation and for railings or chairs along the hallways possibly fall within these two forms of reasonable accommodation. Therefore, the Court held that Employee should be allowed to proceed with her lawsuit.
Employer argued that the accommodations sought by Employee were not “reasonable” because they would create an “undue hardship.” The Court, however, held that Employee had adequately presented the issue of reasonable accommodation in her petition and that it was too soon to decide the issue of undue hardship.
Relying on an interpretive statement from the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) regarding the Americans With Disabilities Act (ADA), Employer also argued that Employee’s requested accommodation was outside the intended scope of the FEHA. The Court rejected this argument, stating that the EEOC interpretation of the ADA should not be applied to California’s FEHA, because important differences between the FEHA and the ADA regarding reasonable accommodation prevent EEOC statements from influencing the meaning of the FEHA. In particular, the applicable FEHA statute defining the duty to make reasonable accommodation applies simply to “an applicant or employee,” while the ADA applies the stricter standard that an employee be “a qualified individual with a disability.” Furthermore, unlike the ADA, the FEHA defines two separate and distinct unfair employment practices: one for discrimination and one for failure to make reasonable accommodation. According to the Court, the Legislature intended to make the reasonable accommodation requirement broader under the FEHA than under the ADA, and regulatory action by the Fair Employment and Housing Commission could alleviate any uncertainty that this broad interpretation may cause for employers.
The Court also rejected Employer’s argument that, because Employee sustained a work-related injury, she should have sued under the Worker’s Compensation Act, rather than the FEHA. According to the Court, the failure to reasonably accommodate a disability, an unlawful employment practice, falls outside the compensation bargain. Furthermore, the FEHA was meant to “amplify” other remedies and to “expand” the rights of persons who are victims of employment discrimination.