Carolyn Humphrey brought suit against her former employer, Memorial Hospitals Association (MHA), under the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) and its California counterpart, the Fair Employment and Housing Act (FEHA) for failure to reasonably accommodate her disability and wrongful termination. We reverse the district court’s grant of summary judgment in favor of MHA.
I. BACKGROUND [Humphrey worked for MHA as a medical transcriptionist from 1986 until her termination in 1995. Her performance was consistently rated as excellent, exceeding the hospital’s standards for speed, accuracy, and productivity. However, in 1989, she began to experience problems getting to work on time, or at all, because of certain obsessive rituals related to grooming and dressing that sometimes took three hours or more. Some days when she realized she was going to be late, she would panic and become embarrassed, making it even harder to leave her house.
As a result of her difficulties with tardiness and absenteeism, MHA disciplined Humphrey with progressive warnings and counseling, sent her to their employee assistance program, and paid for psychological evaluations.
The opinion of the psychiatric professionals was that obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) was the likely cause of her attendance problems.
Humphrey was offered an accommodation in the form of a flexible start time arrangement in which she could begin work any time within a 24-hour period on days on which she was scheduled to work. She accepted this offer but continued to miss work, at which point she requested to be allowed to work at home—an arrangement that MHA had previously granted to certain medical transcriptionists.
This request was “summarily denied” because of the hospital’s policy that employees who are involved in disciplinary actions are not eligible to work from home.
After a few more absences, Humphrey was terminated as a result of her “history of tardiness and absenteeism.”..................

Discussion Questions 

1. Was the “work from home” option a realistic solution to Humphrey’s attendance problem?
2. How much tardiness and absenteeism should an employer permit before taking disciplinary action if a disability is not known to be the cause?
3. What would you have done had you been in Ms. Humphrey’s supervisor’s position?