Even with accommodations, essential functions are required under ADA

The U.S. 4th Circuit Court of Appeals (whose rulings apply to all West Virginia employers) has been busy deciding Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) accommodation cases this year. In at least two cases, it found that the employees were not protected by the ADA with regard to discrimination and failure-to-accommodate claims because they were not “qualified individuals”—that is, their legitimate medical restrictions did not permit them from performing their essential job functions.

Case #1: Inability to perform in-office functions and job abandonment

In a case decided on January 14, 2026, an employee with breast cancer claimed her employer, a private aviation services provider, violated the ADA. The employee worked in accounts payable as an accounting assistant and had various duties (for example, handling paper checks, mail, and filing) that had to be done on-site—they could not be performed remotely.

During the pandemic, many of the provider’s employees worked hybrid schedules, working remotely part of the time and in the office part of the time. Unfortunately, the accounting assistant developed an aggressive form of breast cancer during that time and eventually had to go fully remote as a result. Her in-person responsibilities were reassigned to the account manager. The reassignment didn’t pose a problem during the pandemic because business slowed so much that the account manager could handle the workload. But when business largely returned to normal by March 2021, the account manager got swamped.