It’s time to get back to the grind after the holiday season. I hope everyone had a great holiday season.

Today’s blog entry deals with the implications of what happens when a reasonable accommodation request of a plaintiff is facially unreasonable. What does that mean for a plaintiff’s reasonable accommodation claim? What might that mean for a plaintiff’s claim that the employer failed to engage in the interactive process?

The case of the day is Bowles v. SSRG II, LLC, dba Chicken Salad Chick, a published decision decided by the Sixth Circuit on December 17, 2025, here. As usual, the blog is divided into categories and they are: facts; court’s reasons for granting summary judgment on the failure to accommodate claim; court’s reasons for granting summary judgment on the failure to engage in the interactive process claim; and thoughts/takeaways. Of course, the reader is free to focus on any or all of the categories.

I

Facts (taken directly from the opinion, though the order these paragraphs appear are not the same)

Tawna Bowles applied for a cashier/service-team member position at the Chicken Salad Chick location in Crestview Hills, Kentucky. Bowles suffers from arthritis in her knees. During her interview, she disclosed that she had difficulty standing for a long period of time and thus would require an unspecified amount of rest while working. That disclosure did not derail Bowles’s candidacy—Chicken Salad Chick told Bowles she was hired before the interview concluded. And soon thereafter, the company sent her various onboarding documentation to complete for an expected start date of Monday, January 2, 2023. Bowles submitted her onboarding materials a few days before her start date. In those papers, Bowles indicated that she needed to be able to “sit down when needed” or “sit and work.”

The cashier/service role has many aspects. To start, as the name implies, cashier/serviceteam members are expected to operate a point-of-sales system for taking customer orders, both dine-in and carry-out. But those team members are also responsible for stocking the restaurant’s drink station as well as the refrigeration unit, which houses premade cartons of chicken salad. The position also must expedite food orders, which includes taking food from the prep window adjacent to the kitchen as well as preparing beverages and then delivering those items to customers, whether at checkout or at their table. And to maintain the guest area, cashier/serviceteam members are expected to clean tables, vacuum, take out trash, and maintain the cleanliness of the customer bathrooms. Given the nature of the restaurant, all Chicken Salad Chick team members are understood to operate in a “fast-paced environment” where effective multitasking and “well-paced mobility” for the “duration of the workday” are required skills.

When Bowles arrived for work, she was told by management that she could not start due to a “paperwork issue.” The issue concerned her accommodation request. The morning of her ostensible first day, her request had triggered a message to Mary Lou Atkins, Chicken Salad Chick’s Vice President of Human Resources. Atkins, in turn, had notified the manager overseeing the Crestview Hills restaurant that Bowles could not begin until her request was resolved. Atkins called Bowles to request medical documentation of her condition. Bowles later obtained a note from her doctor, which asked that Bowles be “supplied a chair for standing limitations due to knee arthritis.” Eventually, the note made its way to Atkins. Atkins, however, asked for more specifics, namely, how long Bowles could stand and how often she would need to sit, and for how long. Bowles called Atkins in early February, at which point Bowles sought an accommodation where she “could . . . stand for ten minutes at a time and then would need to sit for five minutes . . . .” Atkins informed Bowles that Chicken Salad Chick could not accommodate her specific request and likewise did not have a position for which she could continually sit.

Plaintiff sued and defendant moved for summary judgment.

II

Court’s Reasons For Granting Summary Judgment On The Failure To Accommodate Claim

1. In the Sixth Circuit, a burden shifting framework is used to measure whether the plaintiff has put forward a legally sufficient claim of being denied an accommodation.
2. Plaintiff’s initial burden is to show that her proposed accommodation is objectively reasonable.
3. If the threshold criteria is met, the burden of production shifts to the defendant to show that plaintiff’s proposed accommodation would specifically cause an undue hardship.
4. Once the company puts forward its arguments for an undue hardship, plaintiff has the burden of coming forward with evidence to rebut the employer’s evidence.
5. The ultimate burden is on the plaintiff to persuade that the plaintiff has been the victim of illegal discrimination.
6. Plaintiff cannot satisfy her initial burden of showing that her propose accommodation is objectively reasonable. The employer’s words, policies, and practices are overwhelming and undisputed that an accommodation of being able to sit for five minutes for every 10 minutes of standing is not reasonable for the cashier/service role at issue.
7. Granting the accommodation would necessarily change the nature of the position altogether. For example, for 1/3 of her shift, plaintiff’s job would be isolated to manning the cash register, regardless of whether there was a customer waiting at the register. During that time, she would also be unable to tackle numerous duties, from greeting a customer at the door, to rushing in order out to a hungry patron, to cleaning up the spill at the drink station, etc., any of which could occur at a moment notice considering the job’s setting.
8. Allowing the accommodation would fundamentally alter the position by turning the position into a master of the cash register for significant parts of the shift. As such, the accommodation request is facially unreasonable.
9. Allowing the accommodation would also affect defendant’s broader workforce, as other team members would have to pick up the slack for the plaintiff being tied to the cash register.
10. The title of the position is irrelevant, rather the focus is on the fundamental job duties of the employment position.
11. The nature of the accommodation plaintiff requested is so nebulous so as to amount to no accommodation request at all.

III

Court’s Reasons For Granting Summary Judgment On The Failure To Engage In The Interactive Process Claim

1. A failure to engage in the interactive process is only an independent violation of the ADA if the plaintiff establishes a prima facie showing that she proposed a reasonable accommodation.
2. A viable interactive process claim presupposes the existence of a reasonable accommodation.
3. Since plaintiff presented a facially unreasonable request to the defendant, the interactive process claim fails.

IV

Thoughts/Takeaways

1. I am now seeing cases where the court is assessing whether the proposed accommodation request is facially reasonable in the first place. The conclusion a particular court reaches very much depends upon the particular judge, the particular facts, etc. For example, I recently saw a case, here, involving the Chicago Transit Authority where the District Judge there said that a request for light duty was presumptively a reasonable accommodation request considering the CTA’s practices and policies even if the plaintiff did not have specific evidence at the moment that a light duty transfer was possible. On the other hand, you have a case like this particular blog entry.
2. Be prepared in light of the way the case law is beginning to trend, for a judge to first assess whether there is a facially reasonable accommodation request in the first place.
3. The essential functions of the job are what matters and not the title of the position
4. This case should make clear that a plaintiff when dealing with reasonable accommodation requests should have as their first step, reaching out to the Job Accommodation Network for suggestions as to what might work for the particular issues the plaintiff is facing with respect to the plaintiff’s particular job. Once that information is obtained, plaintiff should make that part of their advocacy for a reasonable accommodation. Hard to believe that the Job Accommodation Network ideas for what might work wouldn’t presumptively be deemed a reasonable request sufficient to enable the plaintiff’s case to go forward or sufficient for a court to demand the interactive process should have proceeded (assuming the court is in a jurisdiction that demands a facially reasonable accommodation request in order to activate the interactive process).
5. The court to my mind confuses two distinct concepts when it comes to the ADA. Those concepts are whether a particular reasonable accommodation request should have been granted and whether the interactive process should have started in the first place. They are entirely two separate issues. A specific reasonable accommodation request does not have to be granted where it fundamentally alters the nature of the position, or if it will fundamentally alter the employer’s operations. That said, preventive law and much of the current case law demands once an employer has notice that an employee is in need of an accommodation because of a disability as a result of some information that the employer has received, the interactive process should begin. Of course, the employee is not entitled to the accommodation the employee wants, but rather is only entitled to a reasonable accommodation arrived as a result of the interactive process. Requiring a facially reasonable accommodation request in order to trigger the interactive process, defeats the whole purpose of the interactive process in the first place.
6. This is yet another case using a McDonnell Douglas burden shifting approach. However two circuits (the Seventh and Eleventh), have made it clear here and here that they have lost patience with the McDonnell Douglas burden shifting approach. Also, as we discussed here, two Supreme Court justices, have signaled that they believe McDonnell Douglas burden shifting has run amok and should be reconsidered.
7. Title I doesn’t actually use the term fundamental alteration at all with respect to how a business operates. Instead, fundamental alteration in that context are Title II and III concepts. That said, Chai Feldblum, a former EEOC Commissioner and very involved with the ADA from its inception, once referred to the undue hardship faced by a business with respect to its operations in a CLE I attended, as logistical undue hardship when used in the context of title I. She also said it was best thought of in fundamental alteration of the business/operations terms. We now have a case explicitly endorsing that approach.
8. In many jurisdictions, a failure to engage in the interactive process is an independent cause of action, but that is not true everywhere. So, be sure to check your own particular jurisdiction for how it deals with that question.