Canceling Telework For Disabled Feds Invites Litigation And Waste

By Dr. Gleb Tsipursky

Picture highly skilled epidemiologists and analysts jolted awake by a middle-of-the-night email that cancels the accommodations they rely on to work. That is the scene after the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention told staff on September 15 that approvals for long-term telework, including reasonable accommodations, were paused and existing permissions were revoked pending clarification of an August Health and Human Services policy update. 

The decision followed a January order directing agencies to end most remote work, but disability law does not bend to internal handbooks or political winds. The CDC’s move triggered immediate questions under the Rehabilitation Act’s requirement for individualized assessments and an interactive process, not blanket rules. After strong pushback from unions, the CDC put this initiative on a temporary halt. Still, the overarching policy is a major lawsuit waiting to happen, that taxpayers will pay for it through higher damages and turnover costs; that’s besides the fact that the federal record shows well-run remote work delivers measurable benefits.

Federal agencies cannot replace individualized dialogue with a one-size-fits-all edict when an employee requests accommodation. The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission’s own guidance explains that working from home may be a reasonable accommodation when job duties allow it, and that employers must assess each request case by case, not by category. Executive Order 13164 requires every agency to maintain effective written procedures for processing accommodation requests, a point reinforced in the EEOC’s policy guidance and its questions and answers.

OPM reiterates that reasonable accommodations remain legally required for qualified employees with disabilities, including when telework is the effective adjustment. When an agency announces that long-term telework is “no longer considered” a reasonable accommodation, as reported in the CDC email and in follow-on coverage, it reads like a categorical prohibition that conflicts with those obligations and invites complaints that the agency skipped the required process. The Rehabilitation Act’s core protections, including Section 501, apply to federal employers regardless of shifting workplace policies.

Recent appellate decisions underscore the risk. In 2024, the D.C. Circuit in Ali v. Regan held that a take-it-or-leave-it approach to accommodations presents a jury question because reasonableness turns on facts, not agency preferences. The Sixth Circuit’s Mosby-Meachem decision affirmed a jury verdict that telework was a reasonable, time-limited accommodation for an in-house attorney on medical bed rest, because the essential functions could be performed remotely for that period. Courts do not guarantee telework for every role. They do insist that agencies engage with the employee’s duties and limitations rather than declare categorical answers. That is exactly the kind of individualized analysis the CDC’s blanket pause appears to sidestep.

The financial exposure is real and paid from public funds. In federal EEO cases, remedies include back pay, front pay, compensatory damages, attorney’s fees, and injunctive relief, as laid out in the EEOC’s federal-sector remedies guidance. Compensatory and punitive damages are capped by statute, but back pay and fees are not, and the law reduces exposure only when the employer can prove a good-faith interactive process under Section 1981a. Dozens of meritorious individual claims can aggregate into seven- and eight-figure liabilities once back pay periods, fee awards, and compliance monitoring stack up. Every dollar in avoidable remedies increases agency operating costs that flow into appropriations and, ultimately, public borrowing. That is a bad trade for a policy adopted without the individualized review the law requires.

The pause also runs headlong into what agencies have already learned about telework’s value when managed with discipline. OPM’s most recent governmentwide assessment found telework eligibility rose to 57 percent of the federal workforce in FY 2023 and documented agency-reported gains in recruitment, retention, and productivity when telework is part of a deliberate hybrid strategy. The same report counted roughly 7 percent of the workforce in fully remote positions by the end of FY 2023, reflecting mission-driven job design rather than ad hoc exceptions. Evidence from a large randomized trial examined by the National Bureau of Economic Research found that hybrid schedules cut attrition by about one-third without harming performance, a result that speaks directly to agencies competing for scarce technical talent. Lower attrition means fewer vacancies and less institutional knowledge drainage, both of which save money.

Taxpayers benefit when telework discipline aligns with real-estate decisions. GAO’s testimony to Congress showed that, during sampled weeks in early 2023, 17 of 24 headquarters buildings ran at 25 percent capacity or less, and agencies spend about $2 billion annually to operate and maintain owned office buildings in addition to about $5 billion to lease space regardless of utilization. A smart telework posture tied to footprint reductions can capture those fixed-cost savings without sacrificing mission delivery.

By contrast, yanking accommodations and forcing attendance where location does not affect outcomes trades proven savings for litigation exposure and turnover costs. The return-to-office push has political energy, but it does not change the math agencies face when underused buildings drain budgets.

The immediate context around the CDC only sharpens the concern. STAT reported the September 16 story based on the September 15 email and linked the change to an August HHS telework instruction revision. Axios added that officials who oversaw accommodations at the CDC were removed in an April reduction in force, complicating compliance. The Atlanta Journal-Constitution noted that workers had just returned to the office after an August 8 attack on the agency’s headquarters, a factor that makes a blanket denial of telework accommodations even more fraught for employees with disabilities who can perform their roles remotely. None of these facts relax the Rehabilitation Act’s requirements. OPM’s return-to-in-person FAQs and the Federal Register entry for the January 20 memorandum both emphasize that implementation must remain consistent with applicable law, which includes individualized analyses and the interactive process.

The broader debate has been clear for years, and the policy arguments were mapped out long before this week’s controversy. Analysts have chronicled how indiscriminate return-to-office mandates waste money and weaken recruitment while ignoring empirical gains in productivity and service delivery under well-designed hybrid models. One piece framed federal telework as a success story at risk of being sacrificed to symbolism rather than performance, while another warned that killing remote work would bleed taxpayers without solving any real problem. Additional commentary examined proposals to slash pay for remote workers and explained why accountability can be enforced regardless of location.

These themes are now immediately relevant. The CDC’s blanket pause takes the worst version of RTO politics and applies it to the very population Congress intended to protect. It offers no operational upside, risks losing trained specialists, and all but guarantees legal fights the public will pay to litigate and then to unwind.

Congressional pressure has amplified the noise. Advocates of the SHOW UP Act continue to argue that telework has left federal offices underused, but GAO’s findings show the correct response is to right-size the footprint, not to declare that location equals productivity.

Meanwhile, executive-branch policy has oscillated. The January 20 White House memorandum directed agencies to end most remote work while permitting exemptions, and HHS updated its telework instruction in August. Those documents do not change the Rehabilitation Act’s command. EEOC guidance under Executive Order 13164 still requires individualized procedures and written explanations when accommodations are denied. Agencies that forget these basics learn them again in court, with taxpayers funding the refresher.

The fix is straightforward and fiscally conservative. Restore individualized review immediately. Re-open the interactive process on every paused or revoked request. Document job-duty-based reasons when a specific accommodation would be ineffective or impose undue hardship. Align workforce posture with real-estate strategy to capture the savings GAO identified rather than paying to heat and cool empty floors. Use the federal evidence base that OPM and GAO already assembled, add agency-level performance metrics, and manage telework like any other tool. That is how leaders reduce risk, retain talent, and protect the public purse.

Canceling telework accommodations for employees with disabilities is not prudent management. It telegraphs legal noncompliance, invites expensive litigation, and discards proven practices that strengthen performance and save money. The Rehabilitation Act requires individualized analysis and good-faith dialogue, and federal guidance already tells agencies exactly how to comply. The evidence shows that well-run telework boosts retention, safeguards continuity, and enables right-sizing of an underused real-estate portfolio. The CDC’s blanket pause offers no benefit and guarantees higher costs. If leaders want to protect taxpayers and deliver results, they should restore lawful accommodations and let data, not optics, drive workforce design.

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