Searls v. Johns Hopkins Hosp. — Jan. 2016 (Summary)

ADA/DISCRIMINATION

Searls v. Johns Hopkins Hosp.
Civil No. CCB-14-2983 (D. Md. Jan. 21, 2016)

The United States District Court for the District of Maryland granted a deaf nurse’s motions to strike and for partial summary judgment against a hospital with regard to the nurse’s claim of discrimination under the ADA. The nurse completed two clinical rotations in a unit of the hospital with the aid of an ASL interpreter. She then applied for a nursing position responsible for coordinating care, which she accepted. The job description for the position required listening and communication skills, so the nurse requested an ASL interpreter as an accommodation. The ADA compliance team for the hospital estimated that providing the nurse with two ASL interpreters would cost $240,000 a year, while the unit’s budget was $3.4 million per year. After the requested accommodation was forwarded to and discussed by nursing administrators, the nurse manager informed the ADA compliance team that the unit’s threshold budget for interpreter costs was “zero” because the interpreter would be an ongoing operating cost that was not budgeted or funded. Additionally, the nurse manager explained they would need to layoff four nurses to fund the interpreter because the unit “cannot incur any new expenses,” and that these layoffs would amount to an “enormous safety risk.” Although the nurse indicated she was only seeking a single ASL interpreter, the ADA compliance team along with the nurse manager concluded the cost was prohibitive. The nurse manager and a member of the ADA compliance team rescinded the nurse’s offer via letter. A few months later, the nurse found employment with another hospital that fulfilled her request for an ASL interpreter.

The district court disagreed with the hospital that the nurse’s accommodation was not “reasonable.” The court found the nurse would retain responsibility over a substantial portion of the duties of her job because she would formulate her own questions to ask, voice her own responses with regard to patient care, and would act on her own in response to alarms. Additionally, the court found that the nurse’s deafness did not render her unable to perform essential job functions within the meaning of the ADA; the nurse would need to rely upon her own medical judgment and training when providing care and responding to alarms after receiving a visual cue from the ASL interpreter.

The district court granted summary judgment in favor of the nurse with respect to the hospital’s undue hardship defense, holding that while the budget of the unit was relevant, the hospital had failed to address how hiring an interpreter at the cost of “0.007%” of the hospital’s budget could impose an undue hardship on the hospital. The district court said that the employer’s budget with respect to accommodations was “irrelevant,” and the fact that the interpreter would cost twice as much as the nurse’s salary did not necessarily make the accommodation an undue hardship. Furthermore, the court found the ability of the nurse’s current employer to supply her with an ASL interpreter to be “particularly relevant.”

The district court disagreed with the hospital that hiring the nurse would be a direct threat. First, the court noted the hospital’s concerns for patient safety were raised only after the nurse filed the present lawsuit, and were therefore “suggestive of pretext.” Additionally, the court rejected the hospital’s direct threat defense because the hospital’s only explanation in rescinding the nurse’s employment offer was because of the cost of the ASL interpreter, and the hospital failed to base its determination that the nurse would be a risk to patient safety on an individualized assessment of the nurse’s ability to safely perform the functions of her job.

The district court also granted the nurse’s motion to strike the testimony of three of the hospital’s experts, holding that, because none of the individuals had experience with deaf health care professionals or deafness, they could not reliably testify as to how the nurse would have performed the essential functions of her job.