It was pretty clear under the ADA that a temporary impairment was not a covered “disability.” But that was before Congress passed the Americans with Disabilities Act Amendments Act (the “ADAAA”) in 2008, expanding the scope of protection. Now, the Fourth Circuit has become the first appellate court to address the issue of “temporary impairment” under the ADAAA. Summers v. Altarum Inst., Corp., (4th Cir. January 23, 2014).
Reversing the dismissal of a former employee’s discrimination in discharge claim, the appellate court found that his complaint sufficiently alleged that his temporary impairment was sufficiently serve to limit major life activities.
Carl Summers, was a senior analyst at the Altarum Institute when he fell and seriously injured himself getting off a commuter train – fracturing his left leg, tearing the meniscus tendon in that leg, breaking his right ankle, and rupturing a patellar tendon in his right leg. Not surprisingly, some major surgeries were required. Summers received short term disability benefits, and reached out to his supervisors about working from home while he recovered. His doctors figured it would be at least seven months until he would again walk normally.
Instead, two months after the accident Summers was fired. He sued under the ADAAA, alleging that Altarum fired him because of his disability and failed to accommodate him during his recovery. The district court granted Altarum’s motion to dismiss, holding that Summers could not allege that he was disabled. Summers appealed only the termination claim.
On appeal, Judge Motz, joined by Judges Agee and Diaz, held that the complaint sufficiently alleged that Summers’s injuries were sufficiently severe to meet the ADAAA’s standard. “Although short-term impairments qualify as disabilities only if they are ‘sufficiently severe,’” said the court, “it seems clear that the serious impairment alleged by Summers is severe enough to qualify.” The district court erred by relying on pre-ADAAA law.
An important note here: Summers did not allege that he was “regarded as” disabled by Altarum. Under the ADAAA a plaintiff can’t be “regarded as” disabled if his impairment is “transitory and minor,” which Congress defined as having “an actual or expected duration of 6 months or less.” But that’s not the case with actual disabilities. Judge Motz wrote that Congress placed “no such durational requirement for ‘actual’ disabilities, thus suggesting that no such requirement was intended.”
Finally, the court rejected Altarum’s argument that Summers’s temporary impairment could not be an ADAAA disability because it was an injury, not a permanent underlying condition. “Nothing about the ADAAA or its regulations suggest a distinction between impairments caused by temporary injuries and impairments caused by permanent conditions,” said the court. The case was remanded to the Eastern District of Virginia for further proceedings.