Labor & Employment Law Daily Wrap Up, DISCRIMINATION—DISABILITY—6th Cir.: Chicken Salad Chick employee’s request to sit for a third of her shift was facially unreasonable, (Dec 18, 2025)

By Kathleen Kapusta, J.D.

Limiting her responsibilities in the way she proposed “would transform a jack-of-all trades position largely into a master of the cash register for significant parts of the shift,” fundamentally altering the position.

A request by a team member for a fast-casual restaurant chain to be allowed to sit for five minutes after every 10 minutes of standing to accommodate her arthritis was facially unreasonable, the Sixth Circuit concluded, affirming summary judgment against the employee’s ADA and state-law failure-to-accommodate claim. “Meeting those terms,” said the court, “would alter essential functions of the cashier/service-team member position while foisting added duties on co-workers when [the employee] manned the cash register” (Bowles v. SSRG II, LLC dba Chicken Salad Chick, No. 25-5329 (6th Cir. Dec. 17, 2025)).

The employee, who suffers from arthritis in the knees, applied for a cashier/service-team member position at Chicken Salad Chick, a fast-casual restaurant chain that, the court observed, operates in a “fast-paced environment” where effective multitasking and “well-paced mobility” for the “duration of the workday” are required skills. Despite disclosing during her interview that it was difficult for her to stand for long periods of time and that she needed to rest while working, she was hired immediately. She also wrote in the onboarding documentation she was given to complete before her start date that she needed to “sit down when needed” or “sit and work.”

Paperwork issue. When she arrived for work on her scheduled start date, the employee was told there was a “paperwork issue.” Due to her accommodation request, the HR vice president had notified the restaurant manager that the employee could not start working until it was resolved. In response to the HR VP’s request for medical documentation, the employee sent a doctor’s note asking that she be “supplied a chair for standing limitations due to knee arthritis.” The HR VP then asked for more specific information and the employee explained that she sought an accommodation where she “could... stand for ten minutes at a time and then would need to sit for five minutes....”

Lower court proceedings. After the HR VP informed her that Chicken Salad Chick could not accommodate her request and did not have a position for which she could continually sit, the employee sued alleging the restaurant violated the ADA and state law by failing to afford her an accommodation of being able to “sit for a duration of five minutes after every ten minutes of standing,” and by refusing to engage in an interactive process. Chicken Salad Chick moved for summary judgment, which the district court granted.

Failure to accommodate. Because the parties did not dispute that the employee was disabled, that she was otherwise qualified for the position, or that Chicken Salad Chick denied her proposed accommodation, the issue on appeal, said the Sixth Circuit, was whether the employee could show the requested accommodation was objectively reasonable. Noting that the employee had to show the accommodation would allow her to perform her job’s essential functions, the court found she stumbled from the start.

Multitasking and mobility. The role, the court explained, was a generalist, front-of-house position at a fast causal restaurant, which made multitasking essential. The written job description indicated that the role involved numerous tasks, including expediting orders, assisting with dining-room service, restocking drink stations, emptying the trash, cleaning restrooms, and cleaning equipment, in addition to other responsibilities and team members had to shift between duties at a moment’s notice. Further, according to the restaurant’s broader job description for all team members, employees operate in a “fast-paced” environment where having “well-paced mobility” for the duration of the workday was understood to be critical to operating in the company’s workplace.

The employee’s request to sit in one location for five minutes after every 10 minutes standing, the court continued, would change the nature of the cashier/service-team member position as, for a third of her shift, she would be isolated to manning the cash register, regardless of whether there was a customer waiting there, and would be unable to perform other duties that might come up such as greeting a customer at the door, rushing an order out to a patron, or cleaning up a spill at the drink station. “This collection of duties,” said the court, “is why Chicken Salad Chick requires both multitasking and mobility from its team members.”

Broader workforce. The employee’s requested accommodation, the court noted, would also affect Chicken Salad Chick’s broader workforce. While the employee was sitting at the cash register, her coworkers would be required to pick up her slack, which further showed the unreasonableness of her request.

Although the employee suggested that she was hired to run the register, there was no evidence this was a standalone job and the restaurant’s written job description and deposition testimony presented at summary judgment showed that the role was far more than a limited, register-centric job. While employees referred to the position as the “cashier” role, “the position’s name, either formal or informal, is far less meaningful than its critical functions,” said the court. Citing undisputed evidence that the essential job duties of the position the employee sought entailed far more than solely or even primarily manning a cash register, the court rejected her attempt to more narrowly assess that role.

Intermittent sitting. As to the employee’s contention an accommodation that permitted her to sit “intermittingly” would have allowed her to still perform the job’s essential functions, “a bare request simply to sit whenever needed is so nebulous that it amounts to no accommodation request at all,” the court stated. Nor did she show she confined her request to sit only while manning the register and could stand when required to fulfill the job’s requirements of being able to multitask and freely move. Rather, the court emphasized, her complaint focused on her request that she be able to sit for the “duration of five minutes after every ten minutes of standing,” which she confirmed in her reply brief.

And meeting the terms of her accommodation request, the court reasoned, “would alter essential functions of the cashier/service-team member position while foisting added duties on co-workers when [the employee] manned the cash register.” The nature of her job meant that any given task could crop up at any given time. Had Chicken Salad Chick granted her accommodation, those tasks would go unattended by the employee while she sat at the cash register, despite her position’s essential requirements and the restaurant’s needs.

Interactive process. Turning to the employee’s interactive process claim, the court explained that a “failure to engage in the interactive process is only an independent violation of the ADA if the plaintiff establishes a prima facie showing that [s]he proposed a reasonable accommodation.” Because the employee presented a facially unreasonable accommodation request, her interactive process claim necessarily failed.

The case is No. 25-5329.

Judge: Readler, C.

Attorneys: Stephen E. Imm (Finney Law Firm) for Tawna Bowles. Mark G. Arnzen, Jr. (Dinsmore & Shohl) for SSRG II, LLC dba Chicken Salad Chick.

Companies: SSRG II; Chicken Salad Chick

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