Employment Update
Working As a Major Life Activity
The 1st US Circuit Court of Appeals in Boston grappled with the difficulty of relying on the "major life activity" of working to support that an employee's alcoholism is a "disability" under the ADA and ruled that it was not. The case is Sullivan v. The Neiman Marcus Group, Inc.
Suing Neiman Marcus, Sullivan claimed that he had a disability resulting from his alcoholism. He asserted that the retailer had failed to reasonably accommodate his disability and, alternatively, that it had discriminated against him based on his disability. In response, Neiman Marcus alleged that it had terminated Sullivan because of his consumption of alcohol during the workday in violation of company rules. The district court granted summary judgment for Neiman Marcus and Sullivan appealed.
Assuming that working could be a major life activity supporting an ADA claim, the 1st Circuit recognized that an alcoholic's ADA claim based on such a foundation often would present the claimant with a "catch-22." That is, to be subject to the ADA's protections an employee must demonstrate that he or she is a "qualified individual" with a disability. However, by demonstrating that an impairment substantially limits his ability to work, an employee instead may succeed in showing that he is unqualified, thereby losing the ADA's protection. An employee asserting alcoholism as his disability will find it particularly difficult to surmount this difficulty, because the ADA explicitly allows an employer to hold an employee with alcoholism to the same standards as an unimpaired employee.
Even if Sullivan could overcome these hurdles, he still would have to demonstrate that he was unable to perform either a class of jobs or a broad range of jobs. The court held that Sullivan, likely concerned that evidence demonstrating that he was impaired in the major life activity of working instead would show that he was unqualified for his position, had failed to produce any evidence that his alcoholism had a negative effect on his ability to work. Rather, Sullivan presented evidence that his alcoholism did not interfere with his ability to work, making a finding that he had a disability under the ADA virtually impossible.
(Source: "Working Not Substantially Limited by Alcoholism 
(www.wiggin.com/pubs/articles_abstract.asp?ID=147474162004)," by Lawrence Peikes.
