Case Summary: Laurie Exby-Stolley v. Board of County Commissioners, Weld County, Colorado — Order (No. 16-1412)

Factual and Procedural Background

The appellant is Laurie Exby-Stolley and the appellee is the Board of County Commissioners, Weld County, Colorado. This document is an order addressing the appellant’s Petition for Rehearing En Banc. The court received the appellant’s petition, a response from the appellee, and a motion from the Colorado Plaintiff Employment Lawyers Association, et al., for leave to file an amicus curiae brief.

The court granted the motion for leave to file the amicus brief and ordered that the brief submitted on November 2, 2018 be shown filed effective the date of the order. The petition and response were circulated to all active judges, a poll was taken, and a majority voted to rehear the matter en banc. The court granted the Petition for Rehearing En Banc, citing Fed. R. App. P. 35(a) and 10th Cir. R. 35.6 and noting that the grant of en banc rehearing vacates the judgment and restores the case on the docket.

The court enbanced the entire case and directed the parties to file supplemental memorandum briefs addressing a specific legal question concerning the Americans with Disabilities Act. The order sets page limits, font specifications, filing deadlines, hard-copy requirements (16 hard copies within two business days of electronic filing), a schedule for a reply brief, and anticipates scheduling oral argument on the May 2019 calendar (week of May 6–10, 2019). Motions for extension of time are strongly discouraged.

Legal Issues Presented

1. Whether an adverse employment action is a requisite element of a failure-to-accommodate claim under the Americans with Disabilities Act (42 U.S.C. §§ 12101–213).

Arguments of the Parties

The opinion does not contain a detailed account of the parties' legal arguments.

Table of Precedents Cited

No precedents were cited in the provided opinion.

Court's Reasoning and Analysis

The order reflects a procedural decision based on the court's internal circulation and polling process. After receiving the petition for rehearing en banc and the appellee's response, the court considered a motion for leave to file an amicus brief and granted that motion. The petition and response were circulated to all active judges, a poll was called, and a majority voted in favor of rehearing en banc. The court relied on Fed. R. App. P. 35(a) and 10th Cir. R. 35.6 to describe the effect of granting en banc rehearing (vacating the judgment and restoring the case on the docket). Beyond these procedural steps, the order does not present substantive legal analysis on the merits of the underlying ADA claim; instead it directs the parties to brief a specific question concerning whether an adverse employment action is required for a failure-to-accommodate claim under the ADA.

Holding and Implications

The Petition for Rehearing En Banc is GRANTED.

Additional holdings and immediate procedural consequences:

• The motion for leave to file an amicus curiae brief is granted and the amicus brief filed November 2, 2018 is ordered shown filed effective the date of the order.
• Granting rehearing en banc vacates the prior judgment and restores the case on the court's docket, pursuant to Fed. R. App. P. 35(a) and 10th Cir. R. 35.6.
• The parties are ordered to file supplemental memorandum briefs addressing whether an adverse employment action is a requisite element of a failure-to-accommodate claim under the ADA (42 U.S.C. §§ 12101–213), subject to specified page limits, font size, filing deadlines, and hard-copy requirements; the appellant may file a limited reply within 14 days of service of the appellee’s response.
• The court anticipates scheduling oral argument during the week of May 6–10, 2019, and strongly discourages motions for extension of time.

The order does not announce any new precedential ruling on the substantive ADA question; its direct effect is procedural (en banc rehearing granted, briefing ordered, judgment vacated and case restored to the docket).