SENIORITY OR DISABILITY: WHO GETS THE JOB?

by David McCarthy

Query: When an employee with seniority and an employee with a disability vie for the same job, who gets it?

Usually the employee with seniority, according to the U.S. Supreme Court.

In 1990 a man named Barnett injured his back while employed as a cargo handler by U. S. Airways Inc.. He invoked his own seniority rights to gain a less demanding position in the mail room. Two years later his position, among others, was opened to seniority-based employee bidding, and Mr. Barnett learned that two co-workers who were senior to him intended to bid for his positions.

Mr. Barnett proposed to U. S. Airways that it accommodate his disability by exempting his position from the seniority system. Ultimately the employer refused, Mr. Barnett lost his job, and he sued U. S. Airways on the grounds that it had discriminated against him in violation of the Americans With Disabilities Act ("ADA").

Summary judgment for the defendant-employer was reversed on appeal. Then the U. S. Supreme Court, in another 5-4 decision, reversed the Court of Appeals and remanded the case to the trial court.

The Court held that the accommodation requirements of the ADA do not oblige an employer to disregard its own seniority system unless the plaintiff-employee shows "special circumstances" warranting from the seniority system in that particular case.

What does a "special circumstance" look like?

The Court offered only one example, to wit, that of an employer who has so often exercised a unilateral right to make exceptions to its seniority system that one more exception will not matter. It is too soon to tell whether the seniority-is-trump rule will be swallowed up tby the "special circumstances" exception, but it is predictable