Joe Moncrieff is a 30-year-old news reporter, and a quadriplegic.   He gets around in a motorized wheelchair, but cannot drive and must be transported in custom van with a driver.   Joe works for a television station in Sacramento as part of a remote news team.   This team travels around the city to cover breaking news in a customized news van.   Joe has won awards for his work, and has a good reputation with his bosses and peers.

Joe applies for a similar job in the larger San Francisco market. During his interview, he's told by Jan Novak, the news director, that San Francisco is an incredibly competitive market, and speed of getting to a news story is critical.   Jan likes Joe, but decides to hire Alex Nguyen, who has a similar position to Joe's in Modesto but has less experience.  

Jan tells Joe that he was very well qualified for the position, but the station doesn't have a news van with a wheelchair lift, and it would have been prohibitively expensive to purchase one.   She also tells Joe that she was concerned that the time it would take him to exit the van and get in position would slow down the news team, and hurt their ability to quickly get to a breaking news story.

Joe files a disability discrimination lawsuit.   He believes he was highly qualified for the job, and that equipping a van with a wheelchair lift would not be a hardship for such a major news operation.   The station asserts the van purchase would be expensive and would also take 6 weeks, during which Joe could not work.   It also claims that Joe's disability would damage the station's ability to quickly cover the news.

Analyze this case, focusing on the elements of the ADA and the defenses to a charge of disability discrimination.   If your last name begins with the letters A-M, you are an attorney for the plaintiff (Joe), and need to provide your best arguments to support your claim that of employment discrimination. If your last name begins with the letters N-Z, you are an attorney for the defendant (the news station), and need to provide your best arguments to support your claim that the required accommodation was unreasonable and/or that Joe was less qualified for the position.  

1st person: Joe Moncrieff's ADA Case

The Americans with Disabilities Act states that employers need to provide accommodations to qualified applicants or employees. It also gives people with disabilities the same rights and opportunities as everyone else. These two parts of the ADA clearly suggests that the station is in the wrong and cannot hire someone else just because they are not disabled. That is what this case comes down to. Joe Moncrieff is not hired because of being disabled. It is not because he cannot do the job with accommodations nor due to him not being qualified. His qualifications imply that even if Alex can be "faster" in important breaking news stories, it does not exactly mean he would do a better job. Joe is an expert in his field and better at the job than Alex outside of the minor detail of being handicapped. According to the American with Disabilities Act, Joe is not given accommodations but rather excuses even though he is a qualified applicant/employee. In addition, he does not receive the same opportunity as everyone else either. The news station should do a better job accommodating disabled people because they could be losing out on great employees. Their actions not only violate ADA, but are morally wrong.  

2nd person:Joe Moncriefff Case- Defendant Perspective

Hello people of the court and your honor,

Today I will be defending the news station. I am here to prove that choosing not to hire Mr. Moncrieff was not a form of disability discrimination. We went a separate path and hired Mr. Nguyen instead of Mr. Moncrieff because it was not reasonable for our company. According to ADA law, companies have to provide accommodations for a disabled individual, unless it would impose an undue burden on the company's business.Hiring Mr. Moncrieff would put an undue burden on our business. Purchasing an expensive special van just to accommodate for one person would not be reasonable or economically efficient. On top of that, Mr. Moncrieff would also have to miss 6 weeks of work. The news station would be losing lots of money within this time, not only from increased expenses but also from lack of revenue.

We also decided not to hire Mr. Moncrieff because he would not have been able to do his job. The San Francisco market is much more intense and fast paced compared to Sacramento. The job requires a news reporter to be able to get to a news scene as fast as possible. Unfortunately Mr. Moncrieff would not be able to perform these tasks to our standards. Even with accommodations, he would not be as qualified to perform his jobs. Many areas on the job will not be wheelchair accessible, thus making us lose out on the story, and revenue. Frankly, Mr. Moncrieff is not qualified to perform this job.  

In conclusion, in making our decision to not hire Mr. Moncrieff, we did not violate any laws. We decided not to hire him because hiring him would require us to make unreasonable accommodations that would create an undue burden for our company. Mr. Moncrieff was also hired not because of his disability but because he was unqualified to perform the job to our standards.