MartinizingTitle I of the Americans with Disabilities Act

Prior to the ADA Amendments Act of 2008, relativelyfew cases proceeded past the initial inquiry of whether theplaintiff was covered by the ADA. Consequently, the scopeof an employer's obligation to provide a reasonableaccommodation to an individual with a disability remainsunder-developed and under-theorized. Now that theAmendments have made it easier for plaintiffs to provethat they have a disability under the ADA, we can expectto see more courts struggling with many difficultreasonable accommodation issues. The current case law ischaotic, providing little guidance to employers and courtsin determining whether an accommodation is reasonable,and making it impossible to discern any unified principleto explain the chaotic results.

This Article does just that.It identifies the scope of an employer's obligation toreasonably accommodate its employees by proposing aunified approach to the reasonable accommodationprovision.I am facilitated in this endeavor by relying on a caseunder Title III, the public accommodations Title of theADA. In PGA Tour, Inc. v. Martin, involving professionalgolfer Casey Martin's request to use a golf cart during thefinal rounds of the tournament, the Supreme Court held that the PGA Tour has to provide Casey Martin with areasonable modification to its no-golf-carts rule becausethe modification did not 'fundamentally alter" the natureof the public accommodation. This inquiry involved twoquestions: (1) whether the modification sought altered suchan essential aspect of the game of golf that it would beunacceptable even if it affected all competitors equally;and (2) whether it give an unfair advantage to theindividual with the disability. Although an employer isnot a golf tournament, the standard from Martin canprovide clarity to the vague "reasonableness"standard inTitle I's reasonable accommodation provision.

First, usingthe fundamental alteration standard, courts shoulddetermine whether the accommodation would'fundamentally alter"the nature of the employer-employeerelationship. Second, when an accommodation placesburdens on other employees, courts should determine if theaccommodation causes an unreasonable burden by askingthe analogous question from Martin of whether theaccommodation would have given an unfair advantage to theemployee with a disability. Thus, although not a perfectfit, Martinizing Title I offers helpful structure forproviding a coherent, unified approach to the reasonableaccommodation provision under the ADA.