Written by Jonathan A. Wexler and Zackary W. Harris from Vedder Price PC on April 3, 2025
On March 25, 2025, in Tudor v. Whitehall Central School District, the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit vacated the Northern District of New York’s grant of summary judgment in favor of the Whitehall Central School District (the “District”) on a failure-to-accommodate claim brought under the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) by Angel Tudor (“Tudor”), a teacher in the District. In its opinion, the court held that a reasonable accommodation may be required even when the employee can perform the essential functions of their job without the accommodation.
Tudor originally sued the District for failing to provide an accommodation in the form of a 15-minute break off campus during her scheduled prep period. Tudor had a long-standing history of PTSD and previously received these accommodations until a change in District policy that no longer permitted teachers to leave school grounds. From 2017 to 2019, the District still allowed Tudor to take these breaks in the morning, as well as an afternoon break when another staff member could supervise Tudor’s students.
This case focused on the 2019-2020 academic year, when Tudor was assigned to supervise students for an afternoon study hall period. During this academic year, another staff member was generally unavailable to cover for Tudor during the afternoon study period so she could take her 15-minute break. In response, she took her break anyway and left campus on 91 out of the 100 days that school was in session before the pandemic. She knew that taking breaks in this way violated District policy and claimed that this awareness heightened her anxiety.
When this case came before the district court, Tudor admitted that she could still perform the essential functions of her job without the accommodation. This admission led the district court to grant summary judgment in favor of the District, holding that Tudor’s ability to perform her job without an accommodation meant that she could not establish the District had failed to provide her with one.
The Second Circuit reversed on the basis of the third element required for the a failure-to-accommodate claim, which is whether the employee was otherwise qualified to perform the essential functions of their job, with or without reasonable accommodation. Relying on a textual analysis of the law, the court found that the ADA does not require employers to provide only necessary accommodations. Instead, the ADA requires employers to offer reasonable accommodations to all qualified individuals even if an employee can perform the essential functions of their job with or without the accommodation.
The Second Circuit held that Tudor’s ability to perform her essential job functions did not foreclose her ability to bring a failure-to-accommodate claim under the ADA. The case was remanded to the District Court for further proceedings. This holding by the Second Circuit aligns the court with the First, Fifth, Sixth, Eighth, Tenth, Eleventh and DC Circuits.
Based on the Second Circuit’s holding in this case, employers in New York, Connecticut, and Vermont should reexamine their process for evaluating employee accommodations requests under the ADA. Employers cannot deny an employee an accommodation simply because an employee can perform their job without it. Instead, employers must still consider the overall reasonableness of the accommodation and whether it will cause undue hardship on the employer to provide the accommodation.
