ADA and Employment: What the Americans with Disabilities Act Requires of Employers

Title I of the Americans with Disabilities Act prohibits covered employers from discriminating against qualified individuals with disabilities in all aspects of employment, including hiring, firing, pay, promotion, job assignments, training, and any other term or condition of employment. It also requires employers to provide reasonable accommodations to qualified individuals with disabilities unless doing so would impose an undue hardship on the business. For many employers, the accommodation obligation — particularly managing the interactive process and determining what constitutes undue hardship — is the most operationally demanding aspect of ADA compliance.

Which Employers Are Covered

Title I of the ADA applies to employers with 15 or more employees for each working day in each of 20 or more calendar weeks in the current or preceding year. Many states and localities have enacted disability discrimination laws that apply to smaller employers — California’s FEHA applies to employers with 5 or more employees, and New York City’s Human Rights Law applies to employers with 4 or more employees. Employers below the federal threshold need to know whether their state or local law creates parallel obligations.

Who Is Protected

The ADA protects qualified individuals with disabilities. A disability is defined as a physical or mental impairment that substantially limits one or more major life activities, a record of such an impairment, or being regarded as having such an impairment. Following the ADA Amendments Act of 2008, which Congress passed specifically to overturn a series of Supreme Court decisions that had narrowed the ADA’s coverage, the definition of disability is interpreted broadly. Major life activities include not just major physical functions but also major bodily functions such as immune system operation, cell growth, brain function, respiratory function, and others. Episodic conditions that are in remission — such as cancer in remission or bipolar disorder during a stable period — may still qualify as disabilities.

Qualified Individual

The ADA protects qualified individuals — people who, with or without reasonable accommodation, can perform the essential functions of the job. Essential functions are the fundamental duties of the position, not the marginal or incidental ones. An employer’s written job description, when prepared before advertising or interviewing for the position, is considered evidence of essential functions. Employers should ensure that job descriptions accurately describe essential functions, because those descriptions will be scrutinized if an accommodation dispute arises.

Reasonable Accommodation

A reasonable accommodation is any modification or adjustment to a job, the work environment, or the way things are usually done that enables a qualified individual with a disability to enjoy equal employment opportunities. Examples of reasonable accommodations include modifying work schedules or hours, allowing remote work or telework, restructuring job duties (redistributing marginal functions), providing or modifying equipment or devices, adjusting training materials or policies, making the physical workspace accessible, and providing leave as an accommodation.

The key principle is that the accommodation must be effective — it must actually address the limitation caused by the disability. The employer is not required to provide the specific accommodation requested by the employee if an alternative effective accommodation is available. The employer is also not required to provide an accommodation that would eliminate an essential function of the job, lower production standards, or create an undue hardship.

The Interactive Process

When an employee requests an accommodation, or when the employer has reason to believe that an employee may need one, the employer must engage in a good-faith interactive process to identify effective accommodations. The interactive process is a dialogue between the employer and the employee — not a one-time request-and-response. It involves discussing the employee’s functional limitations, exploring potential accommodations, determining whether the requested accommodation is effective and whether it creates an undue hardship, and agreeing on an accommodation to implement.

Documentation of the interactive process is important for two reasons: it demonstrates that the employer made a good-faith effort to accommodate, and it creates a record of why a particular accommodation was or was not provided. An employer who fails to engage in the interactive process — who simply refuses an accommodation request without discussion — may face ADA liability even if the requested accommodation would ultimately not have been required.

Undue Hardship

An employer is not required to provide an accommodation that would impose an undue hardship — significant difficulty or expense in light of the employer’s size, financial resources, nature of operations, and the impact of the accommodation on those operations. The undue hardship analysis is highly fact-specific and considers the overall financial resources of the employer (including any parent organization), the number of employees, and the nature of the operation. Small businesses with limited resources may qualify for undue hardship defenses that would not be available to large employers.

Medical Inquiries and Examinations

The ADA strictly regulates when and how employers may make medical inquiries or require medical examinations. Before a job offer is made, an employer may not ask about a disability or require a medical examination. After a conditional job offer is made, the employer may require a medical examination if it does so for all entering employees in the same job category. After employment begins, medical examinations are permitted only when they are job-related and consistent with business necessity.

The Bottom Line

ADA employment compliance requires more than a policy statement against disability discrimination. It requires understanding the broad definition of disability, maintaining accurate job descriptions that identify essential functions, training supervisors to recognize and respond appropriately to accommodation requests, engaging in a documented interactive process when accommodations are requested, and making individualized determinations rather than categorical exclusions. Employers who approach ADA issues thoughtfully and in good faith are in a far stronger position than those who make snap judgments about what an employee with a disability can or cannot do.