4th Circuit: Safety requirement outweighs ADA claim

The Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) provides protection for people with disabilities, but it isn’t absolute, as the U.S. 4th Circuit Court of Appeals (which covers South Carolina employers) pointed out in a recent decision. Read on to see how safety concerns helped an employer prevail in an ADA case.

Facts

In 1998, Sheila Holmes began working for General Dynamics as a shelter fabricator. The job involved using a variety of heavy equipment and machinery.

At least as early as 2003, Holmes became aware the company was implementing a requirement for shelter fabricators to wear steel-toed shoes as protection from accidents involving heavy equipment and machinery. The shelter fabricator job description didn’t explicitly include compliance with safety requirements, but General Dynamics posted the steel-toed shoe rule on sign boards throughout the fabrication and production areas where she worked.

Holmes suffers from diabetes and brachymetapodia, a congenital condition characterized by short or overlapping toes. Consequently, she wore flexible footwear, such as tennis shoes, from the outset of her employment with General Dynamics. For years, when she presented her supervisor with a doctor’s note explaining her conditions, the company allowed her to continue wearing tennis shoes and told her to keep a copy of the doctor’s note explaining the condition on hand to show to managers.