When you’re in the middle of a return-to-office directive and your body says no, the question isn’t whether remote work would be nice — it’s whether your employer has to let you do it. That distinction has become painfully real for thousands of federal employees whose telework accommodations are being reviewed, denied, or rescinded under the current administration’s push to bring workers back to physical offices. But here’s what often gets lost in the headlines: the legal framework protecting your right to reasonable accommodations hasn’t changed. What has changed is how aggressively some agencies are testing its limits.
The Legal Foundation That Outlasts Any Administration
The Rehabilitation Act of 1973 requires federal agencies to provide reasonable accommodations to qualified employees with disabilities unless doing so would cause undue hardship. For private employers with fifteen or more employees, the Americans with Disabilities Act sets essentially the same standard. Neither law includes an expiration date tied to who occupies the White House. When President Trump issued his January 2025 executive order directing agencies to end most remote work, the order itself carved out an exception: employees with disabilities who telework under a reasonable accommodation were explicitly exempted. That carve-out matters, but it hasn’t prevented a wave of accommodations being challenged.
The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission’s February 2026 FAQs, issued jointly with the Office of Personnel Management, make the central obligation clear: a return-to-office policy cannot automatically override existing or newly requested reasonable accommodations. Agencies “may not automatically revoke” telework accommodations simply because of a new directive. Every request requires an individualized assessment, a case-by-case dialogue about what the employee’s job actually demands and whether remote work enables them to do it.
The practical implication is straightforward: a form letter that says “our policy requires in-office attendance” and nothing else is virtually guaranteed to violate the law. Agencies that skip the interactive process and issue blanket denials are building a liability stack — back pay, attorney’s fees, compensatory damages — that can reach seven or eight figures when multiple claims aggregate. The D.C. Circuit’s 2024 decision in Ali v. Regan held that a take-it-or-leave-it approach to accommodations presents a jury question precisely because reasonableness depends on facts, not employer preferences.
What “Blanket Denial” Actually Means Under the Law
Say you receive a memo stating that long-term telework is “no longer considered” a reasonable accommodation. That language, which appeared in a Health and Human Services policy update that triggered the CDC’s temporary revocation of approvals last September, reads like a categorical prohibition. The Rehabilitation Act requires individualized assessments, not category-based rules. When the CDC walked back that directive after union pushback, it confirmed what employment lawyers had been saying all along: agencies cannot replace dialogue with a decree.
Multiple agencies — the VA, Treasury, Health and Human Services, Justice, and the National Science Foundation — have undertaken reviews of reasonable accommodations in response to the return-to-office directive. In many cases, employees report that the review process itself became adversarial: unclear guidance, delayed responses to medical documentation, and pressure to accept alternative accommodations that don’t match their needs. This isn’t a few scattered missteps. It’s a coordinated tightening that puts the burden on the employee to prove their accommodation still holds.
One NSF employee told Government Executive that their experience “created an environment where I no longer felt psychologically safe advocating for my medical needs.” Another said their stress level went “through the roof,” triggering new physical symptoms. These aren’t legal arguments — they’re human costs that the interactive process is designed to prevent. When an agency’s response to medical documentation is “incredibly delayed” while simultaneously requiring employees to turn around additional information on a fast timeline, the imbalance is hard to miss.
The EEOC guidance is explicit: employers must engage in good-faith dialogue, explore alternatives, and document their reasoning if they deny a request. That means the agency has to explain why an alternative accommodation — say, an ergonomic chair or extra breaks — would be equally effective for your specific limitations. Offering the same generic alternatives to everyone, regardless of disability, undermines the individualized assessment the law demands.
The Documentation That Holds Up in an Interactive Process
Much of what’s documented here about practical accommodation strategy comes from the EEOC’s guidance and from employment law analysis by firms like Jackson Lewis and Ogletree Deakins. The single most important factor in whether your telework accommodation survives a challenge is the quality of your medical documentation. A vague note from your primary care doctor saying “patient has anxiety and would benefit from working at home” gives an employer room to say no. Documentation that draws a clear line between your condition, your functional limitations, and why remote work specifically enables you to perform your essential job duties forces the employer to engage substantively.
If you’ve been managing a disability at work for years, you probably know your own limits intimately. The hard part is translating that knowledge into language that satisfies an HR process. One VA employee who had been teleworking under a reasonable accommodation moved three hours from the office with supervisor permission, only to have the accommodation rescinded months later. The agency’s response: commuting is not an essential function, so they weren’t responsible for it. A federal employment law specialist called that argument “not a lawful justification.” But the employee still had to fight for reinstatement while his blood pressure skyrocketed.
The EEOC has long endorsed trial-period accommodations. If your employer insists you try an in-office accommodation first, you can document exactly how it fails — and that documentation obligates them to reconsider telework. The key is specificity: describe the sensory overload in an open office, the cognitive difficulty after a long commute, the physical toll of a workspace that triggers symptoms. Vague complaints don’t trigger the same legal obligation.
Connect the Condition to the Work Environment
Describe specific barriers: difficulty concentrating in open offices, sensory overload from fluorescent lighting or noise, panic responses triggered by commuting, pain from prolonged sitting in non-ergonomic seating. The more concrete, the harder to dismiss.
Explain Why Remote Work Removes Those Barriers
This is where you show the causal link. Reduced sensory input at home, ability to control your physical setup, flexibility to take breaks when symptoms flare — and how each of those enables you to perform your actual job duties.
Get Documentation From a Provider Who Understands Accommodation Standards
A psychologist familiar with ADA accommodation standards can write documentation that speaks the language employers and courts recognize. A general note from a primary care doctor is easier to challenge.
When Accommodations Get Rescinded: What the VA and NSF Cases Show
Much of what’s documented here about specific agency actions comes from Government Executive’s reporting on the NSF and VA situations. The pattern is consistent enough to warrant attention. At the VA, union officials report nearly 150 impacted individuals in one local alone — employees with epilepsy, missing half a lung, PTSD from wartime explosions. Kevin Price, an Army veteran who medically retired after a helicopter training accident, had his telework accommodation rescinded in February 2026 even though his supervisor had previously approved him to live three hours from the office. The VA’s response: commuting isn’t part of the job’s essential functions, so they weren’t obligated to accommodate it.
Cheri Cannon, a partner at Tully Rinckey specializing in federal employment law, told Government Executive that the VA’s commuting argument is “not a lawful justification.” Driving is a life activity covered under the Rehabilitation Act, like walking, talking, reading, hearing, and seeing. An agency that offers an employee a wellness room and an ergonomic chair — the same alternatives offered to multiple coworkers with different disabilities — hasn’t engaged in the individualized assessment the law requires. It has offered a menu and called it a conversation.
Daniel Solee’s case illustrates how far this can go. A Navy veteran with PTSD and traumatic brain injury, Solee had his telework accommodation rescinded in July 2025. He continued working remotely, his supervisor revoked his system access, and he was terminated for not showing up in person. With union support, he challenged the firing before the Merit Systems Protection Board and was reinstated with $30,000 in backpay. But the settlement required him to go through a new accommodation process, and the standoff continues: his doctor says he needs full-time telework; the VA offered two days per pay period. Solee is working remotely, receiving about half his normal paycheck, and his mental health appointments have increased from every three months to every two weeks.
At the National Science Foundation, employees with cancer, mobility limitations, and other major disabilities report being told telework will not be an option as the agency relocates to a nearby building. The NSF workforce has dropped from about 1,700 employees in 2024 to just under 1,150 in 2026, though the agency attributes most of the review activity to the headquarters move rather than a policy of blocking accommodations. One employee described the process as creating an environment where they no longer felt safe advocating for their medical needs.
What You Can Do Right Now, Even If Your Agency Is Resisting
The administrative exhaustion requirement that tripped up the USDA employee in the dismissed Stewart lawsuit is a real hurdle. Federal employees must go through their agency’s internal complaint process and get a final decision before they can sue. That process is frustrating and slow, but skipping it means your case gets thrown out regardless of the merits. The same principle applies to claims about termination or forced resignation — those go to the Merit Systems Protection Board, not federal district court.
That doesn’t mean you’re powerless while the process grinds forward. You can request that the interactive process be reopened, and you can do it in writing. You can ask for updated medical documentation to be considered. You can document every communication, every delay, every inconsistency in how your request is handled compared to others. The EEOC guidance is explicit: employers who fail to document the interactive process cannot later demonstrate good faith. Your documentation serves the same purpose.
- Submit your accommodation request in writing, even if you’ve already discussed it verbally. Written requests trigger the interactive process and create a record.
- If your employer offers an alternative accommodation, try it — but document exactly how it fails to address your limitations. That documentation becomes evidence that telework is the effective option.
- Contact your union if you have one. Union support made the difference in Daniel Solee’s reinstatement and in the CDC’s reversal of its blanket revocation.
- Track deadlines. If your agency takes weeks to respond but demands your documentation within days, that asymmetry is worth noting in your complaint file.
One nuance that often surprises people: the EEOC guidance explicitly states that employers may consider reliable evidence that conflicts with your asserted need for telework — including social media activity or observations of conduct inconsistent with reported limitations. That’s a reminder to be consistent in what you communicate publicly and privately about your condition. It’s not fair, but it’s the reality of how these cases get evaluated.
The broader picture is that disability accommodation remains one of the few consistently bipartisan enforcement priorities at the EEOC. Both Republican and Democratic chairs have historically supported strong ADA enforcement. The current Commission has not signaled a retreat on disability rights, even as it has shifted focus on other fronts. That institutional stability matters, but it only helps if employees actually invoke their rights and follow the procedural steps.
I’ve been watching these developments closely, and what strikes me is how much the outcome depends on knowing the process — not just the law, but the sequence of steps, the documentation standards, the exhaustion requirements. The law is on your side, but the process requires you to be methodical.
The Rehabilitation Act still requires individualized assessment. The EEOC still says blanket denials violate the law. Courts still insist that agencies engage with your actual duties and limitations rather than issue decrees. That’s not a loophole — it’s the whole point of the statute. The question is whether you have the documentation, the patience, and the procedural knowledge to hold your agency to it.