Miller v. Illinois Department of Transportation

How courts have described this case

Verbatim parenthetical descriptions written by other courts when citing this decision. Ranked by citation-network relevance.

• holding that where employees routinely “substitute[d] and reassign[ed]” tasks “among themselves,” a genuine factual issue existed as to whether a particular task was “essential”
• recognizing that under the federal regulations, “the employer’s judgment is an important factor, but it is not controlling” and “we also look to evidence of the employer’s actual practices in the workplace”
• finding that ability to perform task was not essential function when evidence showed that the normal practice among workers was to reassign tasks among themselves according to their abilities
• finding that the plaintiff’s employer regarded him as disabled when they discovered his fear of heights, restricted him from construction tasks that could even be performed on the ground, and forced him to take non-occupational disability leave
• noting that an employee had successfully worked in his position for several years without working at heights and holding that the question of whether working at heights was an essential function should be left to the jury
• reversing summary judg- ment for employer after juxtaposing the “employer’s judg- ment” with “the employer’s actual practices in the work- place”

Source: CourtListener parenthetical corpus (CC0).