National Litigation Hotline

The Eleventh Circuit has held that under the plain language of the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA), employers must provide reasonable accommodations for employees who fall within any of the ADA's definitions of “disabled,” including those “regarded as” being disabled. D'Angelo v. Conagra Foods, Inc., 2005 WL 2072131 (11th Cir. Aug. 30).

Shortly before she was hired, Cris D'Angelo, an employee working for ConAgra in its Singleton Seafood processing plant, was diagnosed with vertigo and treated by a doctor, who prescribed the anti-vertigo medication Antivert. While D'Angelo did not mention her condition when she was hired by Singleton, at various times during her employment, she complained to co-workers that certain aspects of the job exacerbated her condition or made her feel sick and dizzy. When a new supervisor assigned D'Angelo to monitor a conveyor belt, a task she had never previously performed, D'Angelo's vertigo condition resurfaced. She was required to submit a doctor's note describing her condition in order to be excused from the assignment. When management was unable to locate any alternative position that would not require working around moving equipment, D'Angelo was fired. D'Angelo filed suit against ConAgra alleging that terminating her, rather than offering a reasonable accommodation that eliminated the work that aggravated her condition, constituted disability-based discrimination, both because she was actually disabled as a result of vertigo and because her employer regarded her as disabled, in violation of the ADA. In ruling on the second of these charges, the district court held “that an individual like D'Angelo, who does not actually suffer from a disabling impairment, but rather is disabled only in the 'regarded as' sense, is not entitled to a reasonable accommodation under the ADA.” In making this determination as a matter of first impression in the Eleventh Circuit, the district court followed a line of decisions in the Fifth, Sixth, Eighth, and Ninth Circuits, and rejected an opposite conclusion in the Third Circuit and a decision in the First Circuit that had addressed the issue only indirectly.