Court denies a doctor’s request for a preliminary injunction to modify the American Board of Pediatrics’ exam pursuant to Title III of the ADA, holding that the doctor was not disabled and that the requested accommodations were not reasonable.

The court denied a doctor’s request for a preliminary injunction and his requested accommodation that he be awarded board certification without passing the multiple choice portion of the examination or providing him with an alternative form of testing. The doctor was a pediatrician who had been unable to obtain board certification, having failed to pass the multiple choice portion of the examination on five occasions. He argued that he suffered from a memory deficiency caused by a brain tumor and the subsequent treatment he received. Following his fifth attempt to pass the examination, his employment with a hospital was terminated based upon his failure to become board certified. As a result, the doctor requested that the court award him certification, that the test be modified so that he could take the test “open book” and/or that he be provided with an oral component to the test. In rejecting his requests, the court first noted that the doctor was not disabled as a matter of law. In so holding, the court determined that, while “test-taking” is a major life activity, there was no evidence that the doctor’s “test-taking abilities are lower than those of the average person in the general population” to be deemed “substantially limited” in that major life activity. Moreover, the court noted that, even if the court found that the doctor was disabled pursuant to the ADA, the requested accommodations were not reasonable and would have resulted in a fundamental alteration of the examination and an undue burden on the board.

Case Law Alert, 1^st Quarter 2014