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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By Dr. Gleb Tsipursky

Lobby turnstiles click louder these days, flashing green for arrivals that never materialize. Corporate chiefs extend mandatory office schedules, federal administrators tighten attendance rules, and every week memos promise a revival. The reality feels quieter. People show up just long enough to appease the scanner, then vanish back to environments that let them think, according to new research in the Flex Index.

Required in-office time from employer mandates climbed 13 percent between Q2 2024 and Q2 2025, from 2.49 to 2.82 days per week. Yet physical attendance stayed nearly flat, inching up one percentage point over that time. Stanford economist Nick Bloom summarizes the pattern in six deflating words: “attendance is flat as a pancake.” Rules multiplied; compliance did not. Data expose a mismatch between what leaders decree and what professionals accept.

Workers respond with creativity rather than confrontation. “Coffee badging” – swiping in, grabbing a latte, and slipping out to work remotely – has become common enough to earn a Wikipedia entry and dominate water-cooler chats. A Owl Labs State of Hybrid Work survey found that 44 percent of U.S. employees admit to the tactic, while Business Insider profiled Amazon engineers planning it after learning of the company’s five-day mandate. These stories signal skilled and intentional dissent.

While some executives claim culture requires proximity, badge swipe dashboards measure presence, not purpose. When professionals sacrifice two hours a day to traffic only to sit on video calls with colleagues elsewhere, they conclude the commute tax buys nothing valuable. Every wasted morning fuels skepticism, and the badge-data gap widens further. Leaders meddle with schedules; professionals rewrite the social contract.

Commuter mandates hit some groups harder than others. Parents juggle school pickups against rigid start times. Disabled employees who invested in accessible home setups suddenly absorb costly relocations. Rural professionals who revived struggling main streets during the pandemic now face forced moves or resignations. The badge gap therefore amplifies inequity as well as inefficiency.

Faced with wavering attendance, organizations escalate monitoring. An April 21 2025 Office of Management and Budget memo ordered every federal agency to begin “utilization monitoring,” instructing facility managers to pull badge-swipe and computer-login data to verify daily presence. Nine days earlier the Environmental Protection Agency told supervisors to cross-reference card entries with network pings and warned of “performance consequences” for absences.

NASA quickly followed, rolling out its METEOR system that records every entry and exit, even tracking how long an employee stays away for lunch. Union representatives warn such minute-by-minute logs could chill whistleblowing and collaboration across centers because staff worry that walking to another division without formal clearance might look like slacking. Instead of sparking spontaneous idea-sharing, constant surveillance encourages employees to keep their heads down and their voices low.

Private industry copies government zeal. Amazon funnels raw badge data to managers who must justify team compliance scores, while JPMorgan Chase now ties promotions to documented on-site days. Wired reports a wave of RFID, GPS, and biometric systems “finally coming for the office worker” as companies try to defeat what they label “time theft.” Gartner predicts that by December 2025, 70 percent of large employers will track staff digitally.

These tools promise clarity yet trade in distrust: perks out, monitoring in, and a corporate tone that reduces humans to telemetry. University of Waterloo researchers warn that intrusive tech damages morale and rarely captures creative contribution accurately. Instead of raising accountability, it pushes talent toward concealment or exit.

There is a saner route. Leaders who specify outputs – sales booked, bugs fixed, citizens served – and let teams decide how to achieve those goals consistently gain engagement. Small businesses already understand; the Flex Index shows 70 percent of firms with fewer than 500 employees grant full location choice, while 12 percent of enterprises with 25,000 or more do the same.

The result: Main Street shops lure specialists as well as new recruits who reject badge quotas, gaining an agility edge over giants. Nearly one in three professionals plan to launch a job search in 2025, according to new data from Robert Half’s Demand for Skilled Talent report. Greater control over when and where they work represents a top priority. Among active job seekers, 48% are targeting hybrid roles, while 26% want fully remote positions.

This trend isn’t just about convenience—it’s reshaping the talent market. Flexible work models don’t just appeal to candidates; they also lock in loyalty. In a separate Robert Half survey, 76% of employees said that the ability to choose their schedule and work location plays a major role in whether they stay with a company. For employers, the message is clear: offer flexibility or risk losing your best people.

Policy can accelerate the pivot. Congress could require quarterly disclosure of actual occupancy averages next to attendance rules, forcing executives to own the gap between aspiration and reality. Legislators might also mandate privacy impact assessments before government agencies purchase monitoring software, ensuring taxpayer dollars do not bankroll culture erosion. Tax incentives for companies that verify productivity gains from flexible practices would further tilt the marketplace toward evidence rather than rhetoric.

This struggle never revolved around technology; it revolves around trust. Sensors illuminate motion, not meaning, and spreadsheets of swipe counts cannot capture the spark that drives innovation. When leaders chase head-count optics, they sacrifice the autonomy and motivation that propel performance. The future of work will reward organizations bold enough to trade suspicion for purpose, to replace scanning with conversation, and to judge professionals by results. Those who cling to swipe tallies will watch talent keep inventing exit routes, and the desks behind those gleaming turnstiles will stay empty.

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