December 4, 2025
Federal agencies are required to give reasonable accommodations (RA) such as providing interpreters and accessible technology to disabled workers unless the accommodations would result in “undue hardship.”
New conditions for disabled Health and Human Services Department (HHS) employees to have their remote work requests approved are leaving them confused, Government Executive reported.
A policy document that allegedly hasn’t been shared with the workforce in its entirety states that all requests for remote work, telework, or reassignment must now be approved by an official at the assistant secretary level or above. In the past, approvals had to be signed by Deputy Assistant Secretary for Human Resources and Chief Human Capital Officer, Thomas J. Nagy Jr. In addition, the new policy bans granting telework as a temporary accommodation without approval from an official at the same level.
Federal agencies are required to provide reasonable accommodations (RA), such as interpreters and accessible technology, to disabled workers, unless the accommodations would result in “undue hardship.”
The move resulted in major outcry from unions and disability advocates. Eric Pines of Pines Federal Employment Attorneys feels the new requirements will deter employees from applying for an RA. “If you are going to put the deciding level so high as the assistant secretary… you’re going to make it much, much harder, on a practical level, for reasonable accommodation requests to be handled in a timely manner,” he said.
According to Stat News, there are more than 3,000 pending RA requests in the system, including those from disabled employees who rely on them to function properly at work. The uncertainty has left some employees confused and panicking about job security.
HHS claims it needs roughly six to eight months to clear the current RA backlog at the CDC alone.
Pines says the action could open the doors for an abundance of discrimination lawsuits. “That would not be good for the agency because they’re going to have a lot of discrimination cases against them in the [equal employment opportunity] arena, and it’s not good for the employee because they are basically going to have to jump through many, many more hoops to get the accommodation that they either had in the past and was effective or they believe would be effective in the future,” he said.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, a HHS agency, faced major backlash after requiring its employees to return to the office full-time amid a mandate from the Office of Personnel Management. However, the January 2025 mandate listed an exception for those “excused due to a disability, qualifying medical condition, or other compelling reason certified by the agency head and the employee’s supervisor.”
Officials from the American Federation of Government Employees Local 2883, which represents CDC employees, condemned the new requirements, placing some of the blame on the political climate. “We are looking at an agency that’s supposed to be at the forefront of public health, putting the health and safety of its workers with disabilities at risk,” local President Yolanda Jacobs said in a statement.
“Under this new policy, it seems like political appointees are practicing medicine without a license instead of allowing workers’ medical doctors to make the best recommendations for their patients.”
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