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On September 20, 2017, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit in Severson v. Heartland Woodcraft, Inc. held that an employee requesting a multi-month leave of absence is not a "qualified individual" employee under the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) and that such leave is therefore not a reasonable accommodation as defined by the ADA. In so doing, the court split from its sister circuits and made a bright-line rule that categorically excludes certain employees with disabilities from protection under the ADA. This Comment argues that the Seventh Circuit should have left more room for case by case inquiries into the specific circumstances of leave of absence requests to align with the underlying purposes of the ADA: providing individualized accommodations to employees with disabilities to ensure they have access to equal employment opportunities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

On September 20, 2017, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit in Severson v. Heartland Woodcraft, Inc. held that an employee requesting a multi-month leave of absence is not a "qualified individual" employee under the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) and that such leave is therefore not a reasonable accommodation as defined by the ADA. In so doing, the court split from its sister circuits and made a bright-line rule that categorically excludes certain employees with disabilities from protection under the ADA. This Comment argues that the Seventh Circuit should have left more room for case by case inquiries into the specific circumstances of leave of absence requests to align with the underlying purposes of the ADA: providing individualized accommodations to employees with disabilities to ensure they have access to equal employment opportunities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In 1990, Congress enacted the Americans with Disabilities Act ("ADA") to eliminate widespread discrimination against disabled persons. The Act requires private employers to provide reasonable accommodations to disabled employees to allow them to continue performing essential job functions. One accommodation in particular has divided the U.S. Circuit Courts of Appeals: reassigning disabled employees to vacant positions. Due to a current circuit split, it is unclear if employers must reassign disabled employees despite maintaining policies of choosing the best-qualified employees for reassignment. This Note argues that both the text of the ADA and the ADA's legislative history support automatic reassignments when no other reasonable accommodations allow a disabled employee to perform his or her essential job functions. Although reassignments pose several unique concerns, they are adequately addressed through existing statutory safeguards and U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission regulations. Noncompetitive reassignments should be given teeth either through a congressional amendment or through future court cases. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A significant failure. That is how the Americans with Disabilities Act ("ADA") has been described by legal scholars and disability advocates alike. The statute was widely expected to help prevent disability discrimination in employment, but it has not fully achieved its intended purpose because of the narrow interpretation of the ADA by the courts. Congress recently sought to restore the employment protections of the ADA by amending the statute. Interpreting the complex and comprehensive amendments to the ADA will be a difficult task for the federal courts. Complicating matters further, the proper pleading standard for disability claims was left in disarray after the U.S. Supreme Court's decisions in 2007 in Twombly v. Bell Atlantic Corp., and in 2009 in Ashcroft v. Iqbal, which altered fifty years of federal pleading precedent by extending the plausibility standard to all civil matters. This Article examines the impact of the Bell Atlantic decision on ADA claims and proposes a unified analytical framework for alleging disability discrimination that satisfies recent case law, the ADA amendments, and the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure. The proposed model would streamline the pleading process for disability claims and provide a blueprint for litigants and courts in analyzing cases under the revised ADA. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]