One of the reasons that an employer can legally deny a particular reasonable accommodation to an employee under ADA / FEHA is if providing that accommodation imposes an “undue hardship” on the employer’s operations. However, many employers misunderstand this legal term. They think that they simply can say that because it’s too hard or too much trouble in their opinion to provide a certain accommodation to a disabled employee, this means they can summarily deny that accommodation.
Under ADA and FEHA, however, “undue hardship” means an action requiring significant difficulty or expense when considered in light of a number of factors, including the nature of the accommodation and cost, the overall resources available to the employer, the type of operations of the employer entity, the overall financial resources of the facility where the subject disabled employee is employed, and other factors. An employer must actually formally consider the above factors before making the undue hardship determination.
The burden of proving that a particular accommodation would have imposed an undue hardship is on the employer. This means that the employer has to prove that providing a requested accommodation would be an undue hardship. And, of course, the larger the employer is, the more difficult it would be for them to establish the undue hardship defense. This is both, because of the resources they have and because of the greater options to hire a temporary help or reassign a disabled employee’s duties to other employees in those cases where the accommodation sought is disability leave or an extension to previously granted leave.