You're Not Always In Good Hands With Allstate

BNA's Daily Labor Report (subscription required) has an article on a Seventh Circuit decision that--at least to my non-expert ear--sounds a bit odd.  The key issue in Mobley v. Allstate Insurance Co., seems to be whether the employer's accommodation efforts (or lack thereof) contributed to the performance problems that were cited as reasons for terminating the employee.  What was striking to me is that, after a lot of foot-dragging, the employer provided the employee with a small quiet room to work.  However, after her performance improved (although allegedly still not to a sufficient level), the employer no longer allowed her use of the room, then fired her for her poor performance.  By a 2-1 vote, the court held that this didn't violate the ADA.  According to the DLR's report: 

The court majority found that Allstate offered Catherine Mobley, a 16-year employee with a neurological illness, a reasonable accommodation, but she did not improve her work level. The dissenting judge argued that Mobley raised a fact issue on whether she failed to meet expectations only because of Allstate's failure to provide her with a reasonable accommodation. 

"[W]e find that Allstate did eventually reasonably accommodate Mobley's disability," Judge Joel M. Flaum ruled. "Although it was an admittedly laborious process for Mobley to obtain the accommodation she finally received, the fact that Allstate may have failed to engage in the interactive process prior to that time is by itself insufficient to establish a failure to accommodate claim when, in the end, Mobley was provided with a reasonable accommodation," he said. . . . 

When Mobley was allowed to work in a small, quiet conference room, she was able to raise her work level, the court noted. But after she raised her work level, her supervisor did not permit her to use the room.

Mobley contended that other employees were provided alternate arrangements--such as working from home or working four 10-hour days--and that accommodating her would not have been an undue hardship. But even if the [other] accommodations she sought did not cause an undue hardship, "that did not obligate Allstate to grant these accommodations," Flaum said. "An employer is not obligated to provide an employee the accommodation she requests or prefers; the employer need only provide some reasonable accommodation," Flaum stated. Allstate met its obligation by allowing Mobley to use the small conference room, "the only accommodation proven to effectively accommodate her limitations," the court ruled. She failed to show that her other requested accommodations would have been effective, it said.

To prevail on her failure-to-accommodate claim, Mobley had to show that she was a qualified individual with a disability, Allstate was aware of her disability, and it failed to accommodate her disability, Flaum noted. . . .  She failed to establish her claim because she did not meet her performance requirements, he said. . . .

Dissenting in part, Judge Diane P. Wood would have reversed and remanded on the failure-to-accommodate and wrongful discharge claims. . . . "[] Allstate's abrupt withdrawal of an accommodation that everyone admits was both a reasonable request and a successful arrangement is among the more troubling aspects of this case," Wood argued. "[I]f she was failing to meet its expectations only because of its failure to provide reasonable accommodation, then she is entitled to proceed," she wrote.

This case seemed to revolve around a factual dispute about whether her performance ever met, or with appropriate accommodations would have met, expectations.  Summary judgment, therefore, should be inappropriate.  But, perhaps others can shed light on what's going on.

-JH