Reasonable Accommodation Denials at Federal Agencies: Building the Record Before You File

Most accommodation cases are decided by what is in writing before anyone files a complaint. Agencies rarely issue a clean denial letter that says no and explains why. What happens instead is a request that never gets logged, a demand for medical documentation that keeps expanding, and months of silence. A New York federal employee attorney reviewing one of these cases looks first at the documentary trail, because the same facts win or lose depending on whether they exist in email or only in memory.

What actually counts as a request for accommodation?

Any communication asking for a change at work because of a medical condition is a request. You do not need to say “reasonable accommodation,” cite the Rehabilitation Act, or use a particular form. Telling a supervisor your back condition makes the current schedule unmanageable and asking about adjusted hours starts the agency’s obligation.

Put it in writing anyway. Verbal requests are the most common evidentiary hole in these cases, because agencies later deny a request was ever made, and the interactive process, meaning the back-and-forth the agency is expected to conduct to identify a workable accommodation, cannot be reconstructed from disputed recollections. Send an email the same day naming the limitation and what you are asking for, and ask that it be treated as a formal request under the agency’s reasonable accommodation procedures.

Federal employees are covered by Sections 501 and 504 of the Rehabilitation Act of 1973, which applies the substantive standards of the Americans with Disabilities Act to federal employment. The ADA Amendments Act of 2008 broadened the disability definition: episodic conditions and conditions in remission qualify if they would substantially limit a major life activity when active, and mitigating measures other than ordinary eyeglasses are not considered.

How long does the agency have to respond?

Every federal agency must have written reasonable accommodation procedures with time frames, under Executive Order 13164 and the EEOC’s Section 501 regulation at 29 C.F.R. § 1614.203(d). Many set an outer limit around 30 days absent extenuating circumstances.

Request a copy of those procedures early and hold the agency to its own document. The EEOC has treated unexplained delay as a denial in its own right, so a request sitting untouched for five months is not a case waiting to happen, it may already be one. Where the agency says it is still gathering medical documentation, note that under 29 C.F.R. § 1630.14(c) it may seek documentation only when the disability or the need for accommodation is not obvious or already known, and it is not entitled to your complete medical file.

What should the record contain before you file?

The strongest files are built around functions rather than diagnoses, connecting what the job requires, what you cannot do without help, and what specific change would fix it.

• Your position description, plus any written statement of the essential functions the agency says you cannot perform. Position descriptions are often outdated, and a duty the agency calls essential in litigation sometimes appears nowhere in it.
• Medical documentation that translates the condition into work limitations and durations, prepared by your treating provider. A note saying “patient has fibromyalgia, please accommodate” gives the agency room to do nothing.
• Every email, portal ticket, and follow-up, including the ones that went unanswered, with names and dates of everyone who handled the request.
• Evidence the accommodation is workable, such as coworkers doing the same job on a modified schedule, or a period when you already performed the work under the arrangement you are requesting.
• How the agency handled comparable requests from other employees, if you know of any.

Ask for the denial in writing, with reasons. Agencies that intend to rely on undue hardship, defined at 29 C.F.R. § 1630.2(p) as significant difficulty or expense, are often unwilling to commit that argument to paper, and a reason invented after the fact is easier to attack than one on the record.

Does a return-to-office policy change the analysis?

No. A government-wide or agency-wide policy does not eliminate the obligation to conduct an individualized assessment of your specific request, which is why the 2025 return-to-office directives have generated so many accommodation disputes.

Telework has long been recognized as a potential accommodation, though it is not automatic and the agency may propose alternatives that meet your limitations. What an agency cannot do is deny a request by pointing to the policy alone. If the denial letter cites nothing but the directive and never discusses your functions or medical restrictions, that gap is the case. Where accommodation in your current position genuinely is not possible, 29 C.F.R. § 1614.203(d)(3) requires the agency to consider reassignment to a vacant funded position as a last resort, and agencies routinely skip that step.

When does the clock start, and what does a New York federal employee attorney check first?

You have 45 days to contact an EEO counselor, measured from the denial, and where the agency never formally responds, from the point it became clear no accommodation was coming. Do not assume an ongoing failure to accommodate holds the window open indefinitely.

Two local details matter. New York EEO hearings are docketed through the EEOC’s New York District Office, and several large federal employers here route accommodation requests through internal machinery rather than the EEO office, including the Postal Service’s reasonable accommodation committees and the VA’s facility-level coordinators, which changes who you write to and which deadline applies. TSA screeners are a separate question, since courts have held that the Aviation and Transportation Security Act limits their ability to bring Rehabilitation Act claims.

Successful federal accommodation cases usually turn on paper the employee created before hiring anyone. A New York federal employee attorney can review your request, tighten the medical documentation, hold the agency to its own procedures, and preserve the 45-day deadline while the record is still being made. Reach out while the request is pending rather than after the denial hardens.