Court Says Sleeping is a Major Life Activity

The Disability rules say that you are entitled to benefits if you have difficulty with a major life activity.  Generally, that's been accepted to mean things like walking, hearing, seeing... but now a court has defined it to include sleeping. 

Whether I can convince my judge that my frequent inability to sleep more than 2 hours at a time entitles me to benefits is another matter (the drugs that are strong enough to put me to sleep are also strong enough to screw me up the next day, so if I know I have to work the next day, I can't take them and frequently have to get by on next to no sleep, which doesn't leave me nearly as groggy as the drugs).

From Co-Cure:

Something worth showing your lawyer if you are suing for
discrimination/retaliation under the Rehab Act, the ADA or the
FHA.  This would be influential, but not binding on other
circuits.   Note:  if you're instead seeking accommodations--or
damages for failure to accommodate--you'd still have to show the link
between your sleep disorder and the requested reasonable accommodation.

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D.C. Circuit: Sleeping Is 'Major Life Activity'

Marcia Coyle
07-18-2008

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit recently ruled for the
first time that sleeping is a "major life activity" under the federal
http://www.ada.gov/cguide.htm#anchor65610 Rehabilitation Act.

Reversing its own precedent, the court also held that a plaintiff
doesn't have to show that his sleep disability affected his waking
activities in order to move forward with a discrimination claim.

While the court's decision in Desmond v. Mukasey, No. 03-01729,
answered an open question in the circuit, perhaps more importantly,
it rejected Department of Justice arguments that a plaintiff must
meet a "higher burden" by showing that the sleeplessness has had some
effect on his day-to-day activities, said Martin Desmond's counsel,
Lisa Banks of Washington's http://www.kmblegal.com/ Katz, Marshall & Banks.

A HOSTAGE SITUATION

"We argued a deaf individual, in order to show he is disabled, needs
only to show he is substantially limited in the ability to hear," she
said. "Similarly with sleep, we argued, and Judge [David] Tatel
agreed, you need to show you are substantially limited in your
ability to sleep and don't have to show that because of the sleep
limitation, you're unable to work or it will somehow affect your
day-to-day life, even though it probably will."

Desmond sued U.S. Attorney General Michael Mukasey after being told
he would not graduate from the FBI Academy. He alleged that the FBI
discriminated and retaliated against him because of a post-traumatic
stress disorder that substantially limited him in the major life
activity of sleeping. The PTSD resulted from a traumatic incident
that occurred two years before he entered the academy: He was held
hostage in his mother's house by an armed robber-rapist who
repeatedly threatened to kill him and then return to rape his mother.

At the FBI Academy, Desmond did well in all of his classes, and an
academy psychologist said his PTSD was treatable. But driven by fear
for his mother's well-being and guilt at having left her side,
according to Tatel's opinion, Desmond repeatedly tried to secure a
post-training assignment to the FBI's Cleveland division. His
inability to get orders closer to home, Desmond said, exacerbated
sleeplessness occurring since the armed robbery.

Tatel wrote that sleep is "a vital life activity in its own right"
just as human reproduction is. Federal regulations interpreting the
Rehabilitation Act and the http://www.ada.gov/cguide.htm Americans
With Disabilities Act, he added, supported the court's conclusion.

The panel also held that Desmond had presented enough evidence to
persuade a jury that his PTSD was a substantial limitation on sleep
and that the FBI's reasons for dismissing him -- that he lacked
emotional maturity and a cooperative spirit -- were a pretext for its
PTSD-based bias.

A jury, said the court, could conclude "that receiving two to four hours of sleep per night for five months constitutes a significant restriction on the ability to sleep as compared with ... the average experience of the general public."

Channing Phillips, a spokesman for the local U.S. Attorney's Office,
which handled the case, said, "We're reviewing the decision and
weighing our options."

* * *

Two to four hours a night for five months?  I slept two hours a night for roughly five years before finally getting the necessary prescriptions!