## Facts

- Murray Rehrs, a warehouse technician at an Aurora, Nebraska facility, had Type I diabetes and worked for The Iams Company beginning in 1997.
- After Procter & Gamble acquired Iams, the facility implemented a rotating schedule for all warehouse technicians: alternating 12-hour day and night shifts in a 24-hour operation, with rotation every two weeks.
- Rehrs worked the rotating schedule until a 2002 heart attack and related treatment led to short-term disability leave.
- Rehrs returned to work in August 2003.
- In September 2003, Rehrs’s physician requested a fixed daytime schedule to help control Rehrs’s diabetes.
- The employer granted a temporary accommodation: a straight eight-hour shift for 60 days.
- When the employer learned the physician intended the fixed schedule to be permanent, it ended the arrangement, stating that shift rotation was an essential part of the warehouse technician job.
- Rehrs later remained on partial disability for a period and ultimately received total disability leave and benefits.
- Rehrs sued under the ADA and the Nebraska Fair Employment Practices Act (NFEPA), alleging failure to accommodate and disability discrimination; the district court granted summary judgment for the employer.

## Issues

1. Whether Rehrs was a “qualified individual with a disability,” meaning he could perform the essential functions of the warehouse technician position with or without reasonable accommodation.
2. Whether rotating 12-hour shifts were an essential function of the warehouse technician position, making a permanent fixed daytime schedule an unreasonable accommodation.
3. Whether the NFEPA claim should be resolved the same way as the ADA claim.

## Decision

- The court affirmed summary judgment for the employer on both the ADA and NFEPA claims.
- Assuming without deciding that Rehrs’s diabetes constituted an ADA disability, the court held Rehrs was not “qualified” because he could not perform the essential function of rotating shifts.
- The court concluded the employer’s rotating-shift requirement was a non-discriminatory essential job function in a 24-hour facility.
- The court held the ADA does not require an employer to eliminate an essential function or permanently restructure staffing by exempting one employee from required rotation.

## Legal Principles

- An ADA plaintiff must prove he is a qualified individual with a disability, able to perform the position’s essential functions with or without reasonable accommodation.
- A function may be “essential” when the employer’s operation and job design require it; the employer’s judgment and job structure are significant evidence in the analysis.
- A requested accommodation is not reasonable if it would remove an essential function of the job or require the employer to reallocate that essential function to other employees.
- When a state employment-discrimination statute is construed consistently with the ADA for the claim at issue, the state claim generally rises or falls with the ADA claim on the same essential-function and qualification analysis.

## Conclusion

Because the rotating-shift schedule was treated as an essential function of the warehouse technician position and Rehrs’s medical restriction prevented him from meeting that requirement, he was not a qualified individual for the job, and the employer was not required to provide a permanent fixed daytime schedule under the ADA or NFEPA.


Rehrs v. The Iams Co., 486 F.3d 353 (8th Cir. 2007)