The recent court decision in Swenson v Morongo Unified School District has an important holding on disability laws for California employees. It re-affirms that an employee’s employment and disciplinary status are not grounds for denying reasonable accommodations under ADA and FEHA. In Swanson, the claimant – a teacher with nearly 30 years of work experience elsewhere and a lifetime teaching credential – was diagnosed with breast cancer and had to undergo a number of procedures, including chemotherapy, as part of her cancer treatment. She requested a number of accommodations related to placing her in those classes which she was able to teach given her condition and provide with her certain assistance. The employer placed the claimant on remediation plan, and before she even had a chance to complete, refused to renew her contract with the school district.
The District tried to argue that they didn’t have to provide accommodations to Ms. Swanson’s disability because she was an untenured, probationary teacher with no right to have her contract renewed, and also because the district had the discretion to give Swanson any teaching assignment it deemed appropriate.
The court disagreed, pointing out that neither claimant’s probationary status nor the District’s discretion to make teaching assignment as it deems appropriate deprived Swanson of her rights to reasonable accommodations under FEHA that are otherwise available to qualifying employees. The problem was not that the District exercised powers it didn’t have. The violation is in that the District exercised its powers in an unlawful and discriminatory manner when it rejected a number of clearly reasonable accommodations, that would have not been much of a burden on the employer, without offering any other alternative accommodations.