A lot of you guys are bringing up totally irrelevent facts and applying them here. While I don't practice employment law on a daily basis, I have litigated ADA cases and have a pretty good idea of how its applied. You'll just have to trust me on this.
In the PGA/Martin case, the SC ruled (horrible decision, incidentally) that the ADA covered PGA tour events since a golf course was a place of "public accomodation." Its highly doubtful that any Big 10 stadium field would be given similar status. And this term is key, since that Act applies only to this. You don't have to retrofit your bathroom to allow handicapped access to it unless your property is deemed public accomodation.
Additionally, the act provides, "a failure to make reasonable modifications in policies, practices, or procedures, when such modifications are necessary to afford such goods, services, facilities, privileges, advantages, or accommodations to individuals with disabilities, unless the entity can demonstrate that making such modifications would fundamentally alter the nature of such goods, services, facilities, privileges, advantages, or accommodations." How exactly can the Big 10 make a reasonable accomodation to an official? Guarantee he's not going to have to be in any given position in a game?
Essentially, the arguments the SC rejected in the PGA case are different from what the Big 10 would say.
Further...
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My point was employers are not free to set any arbitrary standard they wish.
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This is simply not true. Arbitrary standards are not the measure of whether an employer (not applicable in this case anyway) has violated this statute or most other statutes. You need to get this out of your head, unless you have some authority for it.
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You seem to think his disabilty isn't severe enough to qualify.
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It isn't so much the severety as how its classified. You can't seriously suggest that a quadriplegic individual should be accomodated by the Big 10 to be a game official, even if he or she could do wonders with their wheelchair or have a surrogate throwing flags. Yet that disability is far more severe than the one here.