Equal Employment Opportunity Commission v. Thrivent Financial for Lutherans
700 F.3d 1044, 27 Am. Disabilities Cas. (BNA) 129, 2012 U.S. App. LEXIS 23821 (2012)
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Rule of Law:
The Americans with Disabilities Act's confidentiality provision, which mandates that information obtained from “medical examinations and inquiries” be treated as a confidential medical record, applies only to inquiries that are medical in nature, or to general inquiries initiated by an employer who already knows or reasonably infers the employee has a medical condition.
Facts:
- Omni Resources, Inc. hired Gary Messier to work as a temporary SAS programmer for Thrivent Financial for Lutherans pursuant to an agreement between Omni and Thrivent.
- Messier worked at Thrivent for almost four months, diligently notifying Thrivent and Omni of planned absences.
- On November 1, 2006, Messier failed to report to work without prior notification.
- Thrivent supervisor John Schreiner contacted Messier's Account Manager at Omni, Thomas Brey, about Messier's unannounced absence.
- Brey then emailed Messier stating, "Gary, Give us a call, and give John a call. We need to know what is going on. John called here looking for you."
- Messier replied to Brey and Schreiner via email several hours later, explaining he had been bedridden all day with a severe migraine, detailing its history and severity.
- Messier quit his job with Thrivent on December 4, 2006, after what Schreiner described as a "strong disagreement on expectations."
- After leaving Thrivent, Messier experienced difficulty finding new employment and suspected Thrivent was providing negative references.
- Messier hired Reference Matters, Inc. (RMI), an online reference checking agency, to investigate what Schreiner was saying.
- On January 10, 2008, an RMI agent, posing as a prospective employer, called Schreiner.
- During the call, Schreiner disclosed that Messier "has medical conditions where he gets migraines. I had no issue with that. But he would not call us. It was the letting us know."
Procedural Posture:
- Gary Messier filed a charge with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) alleging disability discrimination under the ADA on August 25, 2008.
- The EEOC issued a "Letter of Discrimination" to Thrivent on March 15, 2010, stating its finding of reasonable cause that Thrivent had violated the ADA.
- After the letter failed to induce a settlement, the EEOC filed an action against Thrivent in the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Wisconsin on September 30, 2010, alleging violation of ADA confidentiality provisions.
- The district court, identifying a threshold issue of whether Thrivent received Messier’s medical information through a medical inquiry, urged both sides to file cross-motions for summary judgment on this issue.
- Both parties filed cross-motions for summary judgment on March 1, 2011.
- The district court granted summary judgment to Thrivent, finding that Thomas Brey’s email to Messier did not constitute a medical inquiry and thus the ADA's confidentiality provisions did not apply.
- The EEOC appealed the district court's judgment to the United States Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit.
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Issue:
Does the Americans with Disabilities Act's confidentiality provision, 42 U.S.C. § 12112(d), which protects medical information obtained from "medical examinations and inquiries," apply to all employer-initiated job-related inquiries that result in an employee revealing medical information, or only to those inquiries that are explicitly medical or are initiated with prior knowledge or reasonable inference of an employee's medical condition?
Opinions:
Majority - tinder
No, the Americans with Disabilities Act's confidentiality provision, 42 U.S.C. § 12112(d), does not apply to all employer-initiated job-related inquiries that result in an employee revealing medical information; rather, it applies only to medical examinations and inquiries that are medical in nature, or those initiated by an employer with prior knowledge or reasonable inference of an employee's medical condition. The court engaged in statutory interpretation, determining that the plain meaning of 42 U.S.C. § 12112(d) was clear, thus obviating the need for deference to the EEOC's broader interpretation. The title of the section, "Medical examinations and inquiries," uses the conjunction "and," implying that both examinations and inquiries fall within the same "medical" class. This interpretation is reinforced by the body of the section, which consistently references "medical record," "medical condition or history," and "medical files," indicating a focus solely on medical information. While § 12112(d)(4)(B) mentions "inquiries into the ability of an employee to perform job-related functions," this phrase must be read in context with the preceding sentence, which discusses voluntary medical examinations and histories as part of employee health programs. Therefore, the "job-related" inquiries must also pertain to an employee's medical health. The court further supported its interpretation by reviewing existing case law, which demonstrated that for an interaction to constitute a protected "inquiry" under § 12112(d)(4)(B), the employer, at a minimum, must have known or reasonably inferred that the employee was ill or physically incapacitated before initiating the interaction. In Messier's situation, neither Thrivent nor Omni had any knowledge or reason to infer that his November 1, 2006, absence was medically related. Brey's email was a general inquiry about an unexplained absence, not an inquiry initiated with prior knowledge of Messier's migraine condition. Since the EEOC conceded on appeal that Brey's email was not a medical inquiry, Thrivent was not obligated to treat Messier's subsequent medical disclosure as a confidential medical record under the ADA.
Analysis:
This case significantly clarifies the scope of the Americans with Disabilities Act's confidentiality provisions, imposing a narrower interpretation on when an employer's duty to maintain the confidentiality of employee medical information is triggered. By ruling that “inquiries” under 42 U.S.C. § 12112(d) are limited to those that are medical in nature or are initiated with prior employer knowledge of an employee's medical condition, the court establishes a higher bar for triggering confidentiality obligations. This decision will impact how employers frame questions about employee absences or performance, requiring them to have a reasonable basis to suspect a medical issue before a general inquiry leads to protected medical information. Consequently, employees who voluntarily disclose medical conditions in response to routine, non-medical inquiries may find that such information is not automatically protected by ADA confidentiality rules, potentially shifting the burden of protecting such information back to the employee in certain circumstances.
