Miller v. Illinois Dept. of Corrections
| Decision Date | 18 February 1997 |
| Docket Number | No. 96-1642,96-1642 |
| Citation | 107 F.3d 483 |
| Parties | , 6 A.D. Cases 678, 20 A.D.D. 753, 9 NDLR P 191 Bobbi MILLER, Plaintiff-Appellant, v. ILLINOIS DEPARTMENT OF CORRECTIONS, Defendant-Appellee. |
| Court | U.S. Court of Appeals — Seventh Circuit |
Cheryl R. Jansen, Springfield, IL, Scott C. LaBarre, National Federation of the Blind, Denver, CO, William C. Gleisner, III (argued), Gleisner Law Offices, Milwaukee, WI, for Plaintiff-Appellant.
Jan E. Hughes (argued), Office of the Attorney General, Civil Appeals Division, Chicago, Il, for Defendant-Appellee.
Before POSNER, Chief Judge, and ESCHBACH and EVANS, Circuit Judges.
Bobbi Miller appeals from the grant of summary judgment to the Illinois Department of Corrections in her suit under the Americans With Disabilities Act, 42 U.S.C. §§ 12101 et seq. 916 F.Supp. 863 (C.D.Ill.1996). In 1986 Miller was seriously injured in an automobile accident. She recovered, or at least appeared to have recovered, and in 1988 was hired as a correctional officer in a medium-security prison. Five years later, however, as a delayed consequence of the accident, she experienced a precipitous, and probably permanent, loss of vision in both eyes. She is not completely blind, but her vision is so poor (20/800--meaning that an object that a person with normal vision could see from up to 800 feet away she cannot see if it is more than 20 feet away) that she requires a seeing-eye dog. She cannot see well enough to read, though it is possible that she could read a computer screen with the aid of the special technologies that computer manufacturers have developed to enable people with severely impaired vision to use computers. The prison officials discharged her from her job as a correctional officer on the ground that she was incapable of performing the duties of that position. Her suit seeks reinstatement and damages.
We can set to one side the evidence, which in the posture of the case we must accept as true whether it is or not, that the warden was motivated by an irrational hostility to blind persons. It is alleged that he stated flatly that he didn't want a blind person working in his prison--he was afraid that "people would be tripping over the [seeing-eye] dog at all times"--and that in discussing the matter "he grew very agitated and informed us that there was no way a blind person would ever work in his Prison." Employment decisions motivated by the distaste or even distress that severe physical or mental disabilities arouse in some people violate the ADA, Vande Zande v. Wisconsin Dept. of Administration, 44 F.3d 538, 541 (7th Cir.1995), but we do not understand Miller to be arguing that if she can't perform the job she seeks even with a reasonable accommodation to her disability on the part of the employer, she is nevertheless entitled to relief under the Act because of the improper motivation of one of the decision-makers.
She is right not to argue this. Under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Age Discrimination in Employment Act, a plaintiff who proves that a discriminatory intent entered into the decision to fire him cannot recover damages, or obtain an order reinstating him, if the employer proves that he would have been fired anyway. 42 U.S.C. §§ 2000e-2(m), 2000e-5(g)(2)(B); Hennessy v. Penril Datacomm Networks, Inc., 69 F.3d 1344, 1350 (7th Cir.1995). Under the ADA, the employer avoids all liability if the plaintiff would have been fired because incapable of performing the essential functions of the job, and the burden of proof on the issue of capability is not on the employer but on the plaintiff. Weiler v. Household Finance Corp., 101 F.3d 519, 524 (7th Cir.1996); Bultemeyer v. Fort Wayne Community Schools, 100 F.3d 1281, 1284 (7th Cir.1996). For the provisions of the ADA relating to employment protect only a "qualified individual," 42 U.S.C. § 12112, one who with or without a reasonable accommodation by the employer can perform the essential functions of the job. § 12111(8). See, e.g., Moses v. American Nonwovens, Inc., 97 F.3d 446, 448 (11th Cir.1996) (per curiam). The warden may have fired Miller for an improper purpose, but if she can't perform the essential functions of her job, so that she would have been fired anyway, there has been no violation of the Act and she has no right to relief.
This is clearly the situation with regard to Miller's desire to retain her job as a correctional officer. The Department of Corrections has specified a long list of duties that correctional officers are required to perform--including standing guard, counting inmates, inspecting for contraband, escorting inmates outside their cells, searching inmates and visitors, searching for escaped prisoners, and being on 24-hour call to respond to emergencies, such as riots and escapes--and that Miller concedes she can't perform, because of her blindness. The only specified duties of a correctional officer that she might be able to perform, though it would require special equipment (but that might be within the scope of the employer's duty of reasonable accommodation), would be as a telephone switchboard operator or as an armory officer, where she would be in charge of issuing guns to correctional officers as needed. Normally, correctional officers rotate through the various duty positions. Miller could not do this, but she argues that she should be excused from performing the duties that she cannot perform and limited to the ones she can. So she would just rotate between the switchboard and armory positions.
But it seems to us, as it seemed to the district court (there is no case exactly on point), that if an employer has a legitimate reason for specifying multiple duties for a particular job classification, duties the occupant of the position is expected to rotate through, a disabled employee will not be qualified for the position unless he can perform enough of these duties to enable a judgment that he can perform its essential duties. See Allison v. Department of Corrections, 94 F.3d 494, 498-99 (8th Cir.1996); Simon v. St. Louis County, 735 F.2d 1082, 1084-85 (8th Cir.1984). If it is reasonable for a farmer to require each of his farmhands to be able to drive a tractor, clean out the stables, bale the hay, and watch the sheep, a farmhand incapable of performing any of these tasks except the lightest one (watching the sheep) is not able to perform the essential duties of his position. This is provided that the employer has a valid reason for requiring multiple abilities. In the case of the farmhand, the reason would be that the farm was too small to justify the hiring of specialists in each task. In the case of correctional officers and other paramilitary and military personnel, the reason for having multiply able workers who rotate through the different duty positions is to be able to respond to unexpected surges in the demand for particular abilities. The prison has to be able to call upon its full staff of correctional officers for help in putting down a prison riot, and therefore each officer must have experience in the positions, such as searching and escorting inmates, that provide the necessary training and experience for responding effectively to a riot, as well as the capability for such response. It would not do to have a correctional officer whose only experience and capability were in operating a telephone switchboard or issuing weapons. All this is obvious enough, was attested to in evidentiary materials submitted in the district court, and is not seriously disputed by the plaintiff on the level of fact, though she disagrees with the inference that she is unable to perform the essential duties of a correctional officer.
The more difficult issue is whether Miller should have been offered another job in the prison (or perhaps in another prison operated...
To continue reading
Request your trial
-
Williams v. Eastside Lumberyard and Supply Co.
...a permanent "drywall delivery/light lifting" position was not a request for a reasonable accommodation. See Miller v. Illinois Dept. of Corrections, 107 F.3d 483, 485 (7th Cir.1997). What Williams actually argues is that, by allowing him to perform various light-duty assignments for two yea......
-
Aka v. Washington Hosp. Center
...on the employer to 'ascertain whether he has some job that the employee might be able to fill.' ") (quoting Miller v. Illinois Dep't. of Corrections, 107 F.3d 483, 487 (7th Cir.1997)); Mengine v. Runyon, 114 F.3d 415, 419-20 (3d Cir.1997). Thus far in the case, the parties have addressed ne......
-
Curry v. Allan S. Goodman, Inc.
...restrictions.12 These actions satisfy the plaintiff's burden of initiating the interactive process. See Miller v. Illinois Dept. of Corrections, 107 F.3d 483, 486-87 (7th Cir.1997) ("[e]ven if an employee who ... becomes disabled while employed just says to the employer, `I want to keep wor......
-
Medlin v. Rome Strip Steel Co., Inc.
...and notwithstanding the company's obligation to search for a position once plaintiff requested a transfer, see Miller v. Ill. Dep't of Corr., 107 F.3d 483, 486-87 (7th Cir.1997) (holding that employer, once aware of disability and request for accommodation, has duty to ascertain if position......