According to an EEOC Administrative Judge, the Federal Aviation Administration’s Technical Center in Atlantic City, NJ “did not act in good faith, failed to engage in the interactive process, and flagrantly disregarded Complainant’s request and need for accommodation. It appears that management officials believed Complainant was a nuisance.” This ruling resulted after the FAA failed to accommodate Diana Neuman for three years.
Diana Neuman was required to use a wheelchair because of diabetic-related injuries to her nerves and foot. Most of the other secretaries had larger workstations. In December 1998, Ms. Neuman asked for a larger cubicle to accommodate her wheelchair. Management ignored her requests, but expanded cubicles for other employees. After moving Ms. Neuman to a different floor, the FAA expanded her old cubicle so it could store computer equipment, but continued to ignore Ms. Neuman’s requests to enlarge her new cube. The Agency did not give Ms. Neuman the space she needed until May 2001, long after filing her EEO complaint.
Also, in May 1999, Ms. Neuman asked her manager for reading equipment and computer programs to accommodate her diabetic-related partial blindness. The Agency failed to order the equipment until May 2000, claiming that there was no money available for the equipment.
The Judge found that the Agency should have provided a larger cubicle by March 1999 and that it would have been justified in moving someone without a disability out of a larger cubicle to accommodate Ms. Neuman. The Judge also ruled that the Agency “ignored the Complainant’s obvious need for accommodation. An employer who observes an employee reading and performing work with a magnifying glass or pager (magnifying glass which covers a page of writing) has a responsibility to explore other options for visual aids, especially after the employee requests them.”
The Judge ordered the Agency to pay $60,000 in compensatory damages for pain and suffering finding, in part, that the two years of strain on Ms. Neuman’s eyes “was extremely detrimental to Complainant’s vision and accelerated the deterioration to the extend that Complainant became legally blind” and that the stress from the failure to accommodate limited Ms. Neuman’s ability to heal. The AJ also ordered the FAA to pay attorney fees and costs.
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