A divided federal appeals court has reinstated a disability discrimination lawsuit filed by a 38-year grocery clerk who was terminated after one incident when it was learned he could not lift heavy boxes because of a back impairment.

Kenneth W. Camp had worked for Bi-Lo L.L.C., a unit of Jacksonville, Florida-based Southeastern Grocers L.L.C., or its predecessors, for nearly four decades when a store director, arriving at the end of a shift in 2012, first learned two co-workers at the store in Chattanooga, Tennessee, had been helping him lift heavy stock because of the scoliosis he had suffered since he was a teenager, according to Friday’s ruling in Kenneth W. Camp v. Bi-Lo L.L.C. by the 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Cincinnati.

A job description, which was created more than 30 years after Mr. Camp began working at Bi-Lo, said a store clerk must be able to lift at least 20 pounds “constantly” and 20 to 60 pounds “frequently,” according to the ruling.  A doctor concluded Mr. Camp could only safely lift 35 pounds, and he was terminated in October 2012.

Mr. Camp filed suit on charges including violation of the Americans with Disabilities Act and the Age Discrimination in Employment Act.  The U.S. District Court in Chattanooga granted Bi-Lo summary judgment dismissing the case on the basis Mr. Camp was unable to perform an essential job function.

However, the head store clerk testified that heavy lifting was not an essential function of Mr. Camp’s job, said the 2-1 ruling by a panel of the 6th Circuit. Furthermore, the company did not submit evidence that heavy lifting was a significant percentage of the job requirement. 

“This is not a case involving a firefighter, nurse, police officer or a military person where the inability to lift a ‘required’ weight could put an innocent person’s life at risk or cause ‘undue hardship,’” said the ruling in quoting an earlier case.

“In this case, we also must take into consideration that Camp fulfilled the duties of the job for years with his disability and the help of his co-workers,” and Bi-Lo has not presented evidence that accommodating his disability caused his co-workers undue hardship, said the ruling in reinstating Mr. Camp’s ADA claim, as well as his age discrimination claim, and remanding the case for further proceedings. 

The dissenting opinion said letting workers informally cover for a fellow worker’s disability “should not serve as a basis for forcing an employer to continue such an accommodation once the disability is discovered to interfere with operations.”