Labor & Employment Law Daily Wrap Up, DISCRIMINATION—DISABILITY—3d Cir.: Fact disputes precluded summary judgment in professor’s remote-work case, (Aug 19, 2026)

By Wendy Biddle, J.D.

The question of whether in-person teaching is an "essential function" of a professor's job is a jury question.

The Third Circuit largely vacated a district court's sweeping grant of summary judgment in favor of a professor who sued Kutztown University for failing to accommodate her autoimmune condition by permitting her to teach remotely. The court, in an unpublished decision, held that material factual disputes precluded summary judgment on the intentional discrimination claims and therefore vacated judgment on those claims. Additionally, the court held that the professor failed to produce the comparative evidence necessary to sustain her disparate impact claim as a matter of law, and that the district court's interference analysis could not stand, reversing summary judgment on those claims. The court affirmed only the district court's determination that the university’s Spring 2023 accommodation offer was reasonable (Gardner v. Kutztown University, No. 25-1295 (3d Cir. Aug. 18, 2026, unpublished)).

The associate professor was diagnosed with an incurable autoimmune condition in December 2020. She initially worked remotely during the COVID-19 pandemic under emergency procedures the university had implemented, consistent with the Pennsylvania governor's declared state of emergency. After taking FMLA leave for part of the Spring 2021 semester to adjust to immunosuppressive medication, she faced Kutztown's decision to return to full in-person instruction beginning in Fall 2021.

As the university planned its reopening, Kutztown’s administration concluded internally that converting in-person classes to an online format would not constitute a reasonable accommodation. Notwithstanding that internal conclusion, KU's governing written policy required that formal accommodation requests for documented disabilities be evaluated individually and submitted through the Director of Disability Services before the HR director determined whether any requested accommodation was reasonable.

Request for remote teaching. The professor requested permission to teach her scheduled in-person courses remotely for four consecutive semesters: Fall 2021, Spring 2022, Fall 2022, and Spring 2023. KU denied or failed to respond to each request, citing a policy treating any shift of in-person courses to remote modalities as a "fundamental alteration" of course offerings and student preferences. KU did, however, twice offer alternative accommodations.

Alternative accommodation offers. For Spring 2022, KU offered the professor the option to teach behind a plexiglass podium while wearing a plexiglass face shield. For Spring 2023, it expanded that offer to include classroom reconstruction providing enhanced air filtration, limited student capacity, a separate entrance, and social distancing measures. The professor rejected both offers.

Lower court proceedings. The professor sued Kutztown and several individual administrators in March 2022, asserting claims under the Rehab Act for failure to accommodate, discrimination pursuant to a blanket policy, intentional discrimination, disparate impact, and interference. The district court granted summary judgment largely in the professor’s favor, including entering judgment sua sponte on her circumstantial intentional discrimination claim, and denied Kutztown's cross-motion except as to the Spring 2023 portion of the failure-to-accommodate claim. Kutztown appealed.

Intentional discrimination and blanket policy claims. The professor alleged that by denying her remote-work request, Kutztown intentionally discriminated against her based on her disability. The pivotal dispute in this case, whether in-person teaching and in-person office hours are essential functions of her role as an associate professor, was precisely the kind of factual question the court held could not be resolved at summary judgment.

Kutztown pointed to evidence that it had never hired a full-time faculty member to teach exclusively online, that the professor herself had never taught more than one class online per semester outside of the pandemic, and that distance learning constituted only a small fraction of Kutztown's overall course offerings both before and after COVID. The professor countered with evidence that the applicable collective bargaining agreement evaluated faculty on effective teaching, scholarship, and service with no in-person requirement; that Kutztown had no policy, contractual definition, or pre-existing job description designating in-person instruction as essential; and that she had taught online courses for more than a decade and had completed Kutztown's advanced online certification program in 2013.

The court noted that even in cases where the record nearly unequivocally resolved whether a function was essential, the Third Circuit has remanded for a jury's determination. The essential function question, the court reiterated, is inherently a factual issue. Because both the reasonableness of the professor's requested accommodation and the intentional discrimination claims depended on the same contested facts, the court vacated summary judgment on these claims, concluding that they turned on genuinely disputed factual questions that must be resolved by a jury.

Failure to accommodate. The panel applied the same rationale to vacate summary judgment on the professor’s failure-to-accommodate claim for the Fall 2021, Spring 2022, and Fall 2022 semesters, finding triable issues regarding whether the university engaged in good faith in the interactive process and whether remote work was a reasonable accommodation.

By contrast, the Third Circuit affirmed summary judgment for the university concerning the Spring 2023 semester. The panel reasoned that the extensive classroom modifications offered by the university represented a reasonable accommodation as a matter of law to mitigate the professor's exposure risks, noting that an employer is only obligated to provide an effective accommodation rather than the specific accommodation preferred by the employee. Applying that standard, the court concluded that no reasonable juror could find Kutztown's Spring 2023 offer insufficient.

Disparate impact and interference claims. Turning to the disparate impact claim, the court reversed the professor’s summary judgment entering judgment for Kutztown on that count because she failed to proffer comparative, statistical, or empirical evidence establishing that the university's in-person policy disproportionately impacted disabled faculty members. The court acknowledged that it has not yet definitively established what a plaintiff must show to prove disparate impact under the Rehab Act in the employment context. But the court held that it need not resolve that open question here, because the professor failed to produce any legitimate or measurable evidence that Kutztown's no-remote-work policy disproportionately impacted disabled employees as compared to non-disabled employees. The court rejected the professor's argument that she could satisfy a disparate impact theory merely by showing that she herself was screened out, finding that approach incompatible with a traditional disparate impact framework requiring comparative evidence of a policy's differential effect on a protected group.

Finally, the court reversed summary judgment for the professor on her statutory interference claim. It acknowledged that whether interference claims are cognizable under the Rehab Act remains an open question in the Third Circuit, but it assumed without deciding that they are. Even proceeding on that assumption, the court found that the district court's application of the interference standard, which defines interference as "the act of meddling in or hampering an activity or process," was misapplied to the facts.

The district court had concluded that Kutztown's blanket denial of remote-teaching requests for Fall 2021 "clearly meddled" with the professor's statutory right to seek a reasonable accommodation. The Third Circuit disagreed, finding no evidentiary support for that conclusion. The court returned to the unresolved factual question at the heart of the case: whether the law actually required the university to grant the professor's specific accommodation request, as distinct from her general right to request one. Because that question remained open, the court held that the interference finding could not stand.

The case is No. 25-1295.

Judge: Roth, J.

Attorneys: Ralph E. Lamar, IV (Law Offices of Ralph E. Lamar, IV) and Lorrie McKinley (McKinley & Ryan) for Carolyn Gardner. Kevin R. Bradford, Office of Attorney General of Pennsylvania, for Kutztown University, Dr. Kenneth S. Hawkinson, and Jesus Pena.

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