Christian v. St. Anthony Medical Center, Inc.
| Decision Date | 01 July 1997 |
| Docket Number | No. 96-3986,96-3986 |
| Parties | 6 A.D. Cases 1665, 23 A.D.D. 156, 10 NDLR P 150 Margaret CHRISTIAN, Plaintiff-Appellant, v. ST. ANTHONY MEDICAL CENTER, INC., Defendant-Appellee. |
| Court | U.S. Court of Appeals — Seventh Circuit |
Terry R. Boesch, Amy N. Kendt (argued), Valparaiso, IN, for Plaintiff-Appellant.
Robert J. Dignam (argued), Spangler, Jennings & Dougherty, Merrillville, IN, for Defendant-Appellee.
Before POSNER, Chief Judge, and EASTERBROOK and EVANS, Circuit Judges.
Margaret Christian was fired by St. Anthony's Medical Center, she claims in violation of the Americans with Disabilities Act, 42 U.S.C. §§ 12101 et seq. She has a condition known as hypercholesterolemia, meaning an excessive amount of cholesterol in her blood (her cholesterol count is 319 milligrams, which is far above normal), and she claims that St. Anthony's fired her because of her condition. The magistrate judge granted summary judgment for St. Anthony's, precipitating this appeal. A number of issues are raised, but only two merit discussion. The first is whether the treatment of a condition that is not itself disabling can ever count as a disability under the Act, and we think that it can. Obviously, having high cholesterol is not in itself disabling; it does not prevent a person from engaging in any of the activities of living and working; it is wholly unlike blindness or paraplegia or the other conventional disabilities that trigger the protection of the ADA. But it is life-threatening, albeit only in the long term, and if a medical condition that is not itself disabling nevertheless requires, in the prudent judgment of the medical profession, treatment that is disabling, then the individual has a disability within the meaning of the Act, even though the disability is, as it were, at one remove from the condition. We cannot find a case on the question, but the answer seems obvious--maybe that's why there are no cases; in Gordon v. E.L. Hamm & Associates, Inc., 100 F.3d 907 (11th Cir.1996), for example, it was simply assumed that chemotherapy treatment for a cancer not itself shown to be disabling could be disabling within the meaning of the Act. In its early stages cancer is usually not disabling, but aggressive treatment of a cancer at an early stage may be, and if it is, the protections of the Act are triggered. And we suppose, coming a little closer to this case, that if the aggressive, disabling treatment had been recommended but not yet been commenced, the patient could complain if his employer fired him because it anticipated the disability that would result from the treatment; for on these assumptions the disability would be the cause of his being fired.
The plaintiff claims that this is her situation, that she was fired because the defendant anticipated that she would undergo a disabling treatment--namely pheresis (or aphereisis), in which the blood is drained from the patient's body, cleansed of its cholesterol, and put back into the patient. This treatment, which would have continued for the rest of the plaintiff's life, would have required the defendant to allow the plaintiff to take an extra day or two off each month to undergo the treatment.
If Christian's employer fired her because the indicated medical treatment for her condition would have required that she have this extra time off, the employer would be violating the ADA, at least prima facie, though we wish to note two qualifications. The first is that the disabling treatment be truly necessary, and not merely an attractive option. For suppose a doctor tells his middle-aged patient that unless he "slows down," his longevity will be impaired--and the patient then demands that his employer allow him to work only three days a week. The prescribed "treatment" would be disabling, all right, but it would not require an accommodation by the employer, for the condition being treated would be too vague and remote and the treatment too conjectural. Second, an anticipated disability does not trigger a duty of accommodation if what is anticipated is a consequence of the employee's voluntary choices. It is not a violation of the Act to fire an employee who because of his known propensity to engage in recklessly...
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...57 F.3d at 1454, nor can the ADA be considered "a general protection of medically afflicted persons," Christian v. Saint Anthony Med. Ctr. ., Inc., 117 F.3d 1051, 1053 (7th Cir.1997). It was intended to protect those with disabilities or who are incorrectly regarded as having disabilities. ......
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