NJ Supreme Court strikes adverse employment action requirement for accommodation claims

On June 8, the New Jersey Supreme Court affirmed the Appellate Division’s ruling that an employee asserting a failure-to-accommodate claim doesn’t have to establish separately that she suffered an adverse employment action in addition to demonstrating her employer’s inaction in failing to reasonably accommodate her disability.

Facts

Mary Richter is a science teacher at Valley Middle School in the Oakland School District. She is also a Type I diabetic. At the school where she works, students are scheduled to eat lunch during fifth and sixth periods between 11:31 a.m. and 1:02 p.m., and the teachers who are assigned to cafeteria duty and hall monitoring during those periods are scheduled to have lunch during seventh period, between 1:05 p.m. and 1:49 p.m.

At the beginning of the 2012-2013 school year, Richter informed Valley Middle School Principal Gregg Desiderio that she is a diabetic and requested an accommodation in the form of an earlier lunch during fifth or sixth periods because her blood sugar levels would be negatively affected if she had to wait until after 1:00 to eat.

Desiderio changed Richter’s lunch schedule from seventh to fifth period for the second marking period, but she was again assigned to the later lunch for the third marking period of the school year. When she brought this to his attention, he didn’t change her schedule but instead told her she could sit down and eat a snack during class or cafeteria duty if she wasn’t feeling well.