Disabled but Unqualified: The Essential Functions Requirement as a Proxy for the Ideal Worker Norm

Introduction Title I of the Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990 ("ADA") 1 prohibits employment discrimination against a "qualified individual with a disability." 2 Congress premised the ADA partly on a finding that people with disabilities have experienced a history of discrimination in employment and other facets of public life. 3 People with disabilities have faced discrimination through exclusionary qualification standards and stereotypical assumptions about their ability to contribute to society. 4 Over the course of nearly twenty years of litigation, however, the courts systematically removed rights that Congress had conferred on people with disabilities by narrowly construing the term "disabled" under the ADA. 5 In response, Congress passed the Americans with Disabilities Act Amendments Act of 2008 ("ADAAA") to bring the courts back in line with congressional intent by amending the ADA and instructing courts to interpret "disability" more broadly. 6 This Note evaluates recent court decisions that have put the disabled status of a plaintiff on trial for a second time: once when determining whether the person is an "individual with a disability" and again when determining whether the plaintiff is "qualified" for the job (in other words, whether the person can perform the "essential functions" of the job). This Note argues that courts have used the qualified individual analysis to do precisely what Congress instructed them not to - permit discrimination against people with disabilities in employment - and as a result, they are not meeting the goals of ...