Labor & Employment Law Daily Wrap Up, DISCRIMINATION—DISABILITY—N.D. Ill.: Amazon wins summary judgment in ADA suit over safety shoe policy, (May 14, 2026)

By Wendy Biddle, J.D.

An employee who refused a custom footwear accommodation and failed to provide medical documentation could not sustain disability discrimination claims.

An Amazon fulfillment associate wanted to wear his own flexible shoes to work at an Amazon center, but the company's safety policy required steel-toe, composite, or slip-on protective footwear. After a foot injury left him unable to wear shoes with non-flexible toes, he sought accommodations from Amazon. When negotiations broke down and he was eventually terminated for job abandonment, he sued the company for violating the ADA and the Illinois Human Rights Act. The federal district court in Illinois granted summary judgment to Amazon on all claims, finding that the employee himself caused the breakdown in the accommodation process and failed to establish any viable discrimination claim (Vance v. Amazon.com Services LLC , No. 1:24-cv-01111 (N.D. Ill. May 12, 2026)).

Safety shoe program. The employee worked as a fulfillment associate for Amazon from October 2017 until July 2023. In April 2022, Amazon instituted its "Mind Your Step" safety shoe program, which required employees to wear steel-toe, composite, or slip-on protective footwear. This policy created an immediate problem for the employee, who had previously sustained a foot injury that prevented him from wearing shoes with non-flexible toes.

In April 2022, the employee spoke with an Amazon HR representative about obtaining an exemption from the protective footwear policy. The outcome of that conversation remains unclear from the record. The employee testified that he was granted an accommodation allowing him to wear shoes of his choice, but Amazon maintained no written record confirming such an accommodation. Amazon's documentation from April 15, 2022, merely noted that the employee was seeking an accommodation for the shoe policy. About a week later, an accommodations consultant from Amazon's Disability and Leave Services closed the employee's accommodation case, directing him to proceed with the shoe program and to reach out to site HR.

Despite the ambiguity surrounding his formal accommodation status, the undisputed facts established that the employee was able to wear his own shoes from April through September 2022. During those six months, however, various managers and safety team members repeatedly approached him about his non-compliance with the protective footwear policy.

The September 2022 accommodation request. On August 2, 2022, the employee completed a written accommodation request form asking to use his own flexible shoes instead of protective footwear. Amazon did not receive this request until approximately September 22, 2022. About a week later, Amazon informed the employee that it could not accommodate his specific request and would initiate a leave of absence on his behalf.

Within two weeks, Amazon approved the employee for medical leave and short-term disability benefits based on ongoing communication and review related to his accommodation request. As part of the interactive process, Amazon asked the employee to make an appointment for a custom shoe fitting. The employee never made that appointment.

Amazon approved the employee's request to extend his leave until January 31, 2023. However, when the employee sought a subsequent extension, Amazon denied the request after he failed to provide supporting medical documentation that Amazon had requested five separate times in February and March 2023 through both phone calls and emails. On March 10, Amazon informed the employee by email that he could appeal the denial and later provided additional information about the documentation needed to support his appeal. In May 2023, Amazon informed him that he still had not submitted sufficient documentation. The employee never provided the requested documentation, never returned to work, and was terminated for job abandonment on July 5, 2023.

The employee filed suit against Amazon for violations of the ADA and the Illinois Human Rights Act. Amazon moved for summary judgment.

Failure to accommodate claims. The court examined the employee's two accommodation requests separately. For the April 2022 request, the court found no viable failure-to-accommodate claim because the employee received what he asked for, even if informally. The court cited the principle that there can be no failure-to-accommodate claim when the plaintiff received the accommodation he requested. The undisputed facts showed that the employee was able to wear his own shoes from April through September 2022, which satisfied his request during that period.

For the September 2022 request, the court ruled that the employee caused a breakdown in the interactive process. The court explained that while employers must reasonably accommodate disability limitations, they need not do so in the exact manner the employee prefers and must only accommodate the precise limitations of which they have been informed. When an employee causes the interactive process to break down, he cannot hold his employer liable.

The court identified two ways the employee caused the breakdown. First, he rejected Amazon's offer of custom shoes as an alternative accommodation without explaining why they would be inadequate or unreasonable. Second, he repeatedly failed to provide medical documentation that Amazon requested to support his leave extension. The court concluded that a reasonable jury would be forced to find that the employee, not Amazon, was responsible for the failure of the accommodation process.

Disparate treatment claims. The court rejected the employee's claim that Amazon discriminated against him by placing him on leave and ultimately firing him. It found that the leave of absence could not constitute an adverse employment action because providing medical leave is itself a form of reasonable accommodation when necessitated by an employee's disability. An employer's action cannot simultaneously be both a reasonable accommodation and an adverse employment action.

As for the termination, the court applied the burden-shifting framework applicable to discrimination claims. Amazon produced evidence of a legitimate, nondiscriminatory reason for the termination: the employee failed to provide requested documentation to support his leave extension and did not return to work when his approved leave ended. The burden then shifted to the employee to produce evidence of pretext or discriminatory intent.

The employee attempted to establish discriminatory treatment by testifying that a nondisabled employee named Bruce was never reprimanded for "last amnesty stow" violations while the employee was reprimanded. However, the court found this evidence insufficient because the employee presented no evidence that the same decisionmaker was responsible for reprimanding the employee, not reprimanding Bruce, and terminating the employee. Without a common decisionmaker, the court could draw no inference of pretext or discriminatory intent.

Hostile work environment claims. To establish a hostile work environment claim, the employee needed to show that he was subjected to unwelcome harassment based on his disability that was sufficiently severe or pervasive to alter the conditions of employment. The court first separated the incidents the employee described into those unrelated to his disability and those related to it.

Several incidents were unrelated to disability: an area manager telling him not to use his phone, managers giving away his workstation when he returned late from lunch, male workers favoring female workers with better pallets, and a suspension for discussing inappropriate television content. The court found no evidence connecting these incidents to the employee's disability.

Only three incidents related to his footwear accommodation: safety team members telling him he was not supposed to be in the building without steel toes, a tense exchange in which a safety team member used profanity, and an area manager following him to discuss his footwear. The court found these three incidents, spread over six months, insufficient to create a hostile work environment. Only one incident approached hostility or disrespectfulness, and that alone could not support the claim. The court emphasized that generally, off-color comments, isolated incidents, teasing, and other unpleasantries are not enough to establish a hostile work environment.

Retaliation claims. Finally, the court found no causal connection between any statutorily protected activity and any adverse employment action. While requesting an accommodation is protected activity, the employee testified that managers gave away his workstation because he had opinions and spoke out about things that were wrong, not because of his accommodation requests. These general complaints provided no connection to a protected class.

As to the leave of absence and termination, the court reiterated that the leave was a reasonable accommodation and therefore could not be an adverse action for retaliation purposes. The termination, while an adverse action, occurred for a legitimate reason unrelated to any protected activity. The employee needed to show that Amazon would not have fired him but for a retaliatory motive, but the undisputed facts established that Amazon terminated him because he failed to return to work when his leave ended.

The court granted Amazon's motion for summary judgment on all claims and terminated the case.

The case is No. 1:24-cv-01111.

Judge: Alexakis, G.

Attorneys: Antonio Vance, pro se. Jeremy Stephan Wright (Perkins Coie) for Amazon.com Services, LLC.

Companies: Amazon.com Services, LLC

Cases: DisabilityDiscrimination Discrimination Safety IllinoisNews