11th Circuit Upholds Denial of Remote-Work Request

​An employer was justified in terminating an employee who provided insufficient support for her claimed disability and requested remote work as an accommodation under the Rehabilitation Act, according to the 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals. Her employer was also held to be justified in asking for additional support for her claim and request for an accommodation.

A female employee was discharged after seeking to return to work by working full-time from home after the birth of her child, due to what she told her employer were complications from the birth.

The employee worked as a Web content specialist for the state of Georgia Governor's Office of Student Achievement (GOSA). In July 2018, after the birth of her child by cesarean section, the employee told her employer she would need to work remotely and provided her employer with two doctor's notes.

She provided no details to her employer about how her pregnancy complications affected her or how they would be addressed or alleviated by her requested accommodation—teleworking—even when asked to do so by her employer.

To evaluate her request to telework on a full-time basis, which was not standard policy, the employer asked the employee to submit additional support and paperwork explaining her disability and why remote work was a reasonable accommodation for her condition, or otherwise return to the office. When neither occurred, the employee was terminated.

After her firing, the employee sued her employer in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Georgia, alleging that GOSA failed to accommodate her and retaliated against her in violation of the Rehabilitation Act, in addition to committing pregnancy discrimination under the Pregnancy Discrimination Act. The district court ruled in favor the employer on all three claims.

The employee then appealed the decision to the 11th Circuit.

Because the employee did not identify a specific disability she had or give her employer any information about how her requested accommodation would facilitate her return to work, the 11th Circuit upheld the employee's termination.

The 11th Circuit also found that the evidence showed the employee was fired for nondiscriminatory reasons, and therefore, her retaliation and pregnancy discrimination claims also failed.

Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act prohibits covered employers from discriminating against employees based on their disabilities, and "unlawful discrimination … includes failing to provide reasonable accommodations for employees' known disabilities," the 11th Circuit explained.

As to the Rehabilitation Act allegations, the district court found that the employee could not substantiate her claim of failure to accommodate her because she never notified GOSA of her specific disability or connected that disability to her requested accommodation.

The employee countered that she triggered her employer's accommodation responsibilities under the Rehabilitation Act when she informed GOSA that she was requesting a teleworking accommodation for childbirth-related complications. By informing GOSA of her need to telework for this reason, the employee claimed that she made a specific demand for an accommodation.

The 11th Circuit determined that an employee must show that a requested accommodation is reasonable by notifying their employer of the disability for which they seek an accommodation and by providing enough information to allow an employer to garner how the accommodation would address the limitations the disability presents and help the employee return to work.

The Rehabilitation Act does not require employers to speculate about their employees' accommodation needs, the 11th Circuit said. Rather, the employee must provide sufficient information to the employer to initiate an informal, interactive process to discuss the employee's specific limitations, explore potential accommodations, and select the most appropriate one for both the employer and the employee.

The lower court ruled, and the 11th Circuit agreed, that the employee never triggered GOSA's accommodation obligations under the Rehabilitation Act because the information she provided her employer neither identified a specific disability nor explained how telework would accommodate it, despite requests from her employer for such information.

Owens v. State of Georgia, 11th Cir., No. 21-13200 (Nov. 9, 2022), petitions for rehearing and rehearing en banc denied (Jan. 5, 2023).

D.M. Fera is a freelance writer in the Washington, D.C., area.