By Mitchell Riese and Mathias Deeg
In Reeder v. County of Wayne, the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Michigan held that a Wayne County police officer diagnosed with depression and anxiety could proceed with a claim against the county alleging that it wrongfully discharged him—in violation of the Americans with Disabilities Act—for refusing to work mandatory overtime.
Yasin Reeder, a police officer for the Wayne County Sherriff’s Office, suffered from a mental condition causing a lack of appetite, restless nights, and an inability to work more than eight hours per day. The county required officers in Reeder’s position to work a minimum amount of overtime each week without exception, and after 13 rule violations over a period of 24 months, Reeder was terminated. Reeder sued the county under the Americans with Disabilities Act, claiming that was disabled, had provided them with notice of his disability, and was refused reasonable accommodation for his disability in the form of an excuse from overtime work.
Reeder argued that his difficulties eating, sleeping, and working overtime qualified as disabilities under the Americans with Disabilities Act. The county filed for summary judgment, arguing that an inability to work overtime was not a disability under the Americans with Disabilities Act, and that Reeder’s conditions therefore did not qualify for reasonable accommodation under the Act.
The court held that Reeder’s claims could proceed to trial. Although it found his inability to work overtime not limiting enough to be a disability, the Court stated that a jury could find Reeder’s other limitations (lack of appetite, restless nights) sufficiently disabling to require accommodation. The court then determined that, though overtime was likely a necessary aspect of the job of Police Officer that could not be omitted by accommodation, Reeder had presented enough evidence of inconsistent assignment of overtime hours to send the issue to a jury.
Additionally, even if Reeder’s supervisors did not actually know of Reeder’s condition, that Reeder provided evidence of multiple doctors’ notes and verbal notifications to personnel implies that the county should have known about Reeder’s condition.
“[Reeder] has established that a reasonable jury could find him to be disabled under the [Americans with Disabilities Act]… [and] because [Reeder] presented some evidence that other employees were allowed to be exempted from mandatory overtime due to disabilities, a question of fact remains and a jury may determine whether working overtime was truly an “essential” function.”
The key to the court’s decision in this case is the fact that the employer had apparently not enforced the mandatory overtime requirements uniformly. Thus, other officers had been exempted from working mandatory overtime due to disabilities. This created a genuine question of fact as to whether the ability to work overtime was an “essential function” of the job. Had the employer consistently enforced a requirement of mandatory overtime, the result in this case would have been different.
