Marytza Golden v. Indianapolis Housing Agency

After working for her employer for 15 years, petitioner was diagnosed with cancer. She requested a sixmonth unpaid leave of absence to receive and recover from life-saving medical treatment that would enable her to return to work. Although petitioner’s employer provides six months of unpaid leave to other employees, it denied petitioner’s request and fired her. Title I of the Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990 (ADA), 42 U.S.C. § 12111 et seq., and Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act of 1973 (Section 504), 29 U.S.C. § 794, require a covered employer to provide a reasonable accommodation to a qualified employee with a disability unless the accommodation would impose an undue hardship on the employer. This Court has twice held that a determination of whether an employee is a qualified individual with a disability who can perform the essential functions of her job with or without a reasonable accommodation requires a casespecific and fact-intensive inquiry. But the Seventh Circuit—in conflict with at least six other courts of appeals—applies a per se rule that, as a matter of law, a multi-month leave of absence is always “beyond the scope of a reasonable accommodation” under the ADA. The question presented, about which the circuits are intractably divided, is: Whether, under the ADA and Section 504, a multimonth unpaid leave of absence is an unreasonable accommodation as a matter of law in all cases, regardless of the circumstances of the employer or employee.