On March 25, 2025, the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit in Tudor v. Whitehall Central School District vacated the Northern District of New York’s grant of summary judgment in favor of the Whitehall Central School District (the “District”) on a failure-to-accommodate claim brought by a teacher in the District under the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA). In reversing the lower court’s decision, the court held that the ADA does not require employers to provide only necessary accommodations and that a reasonable accommodation may be required even when the employee can perform the essential functions of their job without the accommodation. Accordingly, employers cannot simply deny an individual an accommodation just because an employee can perform their job without it; instead, employers must consider the overall reasonableness of the accommodation and whether it will cause an undue hardship on the employer to provide the accommodation.
In Tudor, a teacher sued the District for failing to provide an accommodation in the form of a 15-minute break off campus during her scheduled prep period. The teacher had suffered from post-traumatic stress disorder (“PTSD”) related to sexual harassment and sexual assault by a supervisor in her former workplace which affected her neurological functioning and interfered with her ability to perform daily tasks, among other things. The District had previously provided accommodations to the teacher, allowing her to leave campus for one fifteen-minute break during certain periods in the morning and afternoon when she was not responsible for overseeing students. However, following a change in school administration, the District implemented a prohibition on teachers leaving school grounds during the day.
Initially, the District still allowed the teacher to take breaks when another staff member could supervise the students, but when another staff member was generally unavailable to cover for the teacher, the teacher still left, knowing that taking breaks in this way violated the District’s policy. The teacher claimed that this awareness heightened her anxiety but admitted that she could still perform the essential functions of her job without the accommodation. This admission led the district court to grant summary judgment in favor of the District, holding that the teacher’s ability to perform her job without an accommodation meant that she could not establish the District had failed to provide her with one.
The Second Circuit reversed on the basis of the third element required for the teacher’s failure-to-accommodate claim, i.e., whether the employee was otherwise qualified to perform the essential functions of their job, with or without reasonable accommodation. The court found that the ADA does not require employers to provide only necessary accommodations and instead requires employers to offer reasonable accommodations to all qualified individuals even if an employee can perform the essential functions of their job with or without the accommodation. The court explained than an employee may qualify for an accommodation even if it is not strictly necessary to their performance of the essential job functions and thus, absent undue hardship on the employer, reasonable accommodations must be offered. This holding is in line with the First, Fifth, Sixth, Eighth, Tenth, Eleventh and DC Circuits.
Employers in New York, Connecticut and Vermont should review their process for evaluating employee accommodations requests under the ADA and ensure compliance with the Second Circuit’s decision. If you have any questions about the subject of this article and its implications for your business, please contact Forework.garding employee performance evaluations, please feel free to contact any member of Forework.