Labor’s disability accommodation delays under scrutiny by House lawmakers 

A bipartisan group of House lawmakers is pressing the Labor Department for answers about delays in processing accommodation requests for its employees with disabilities and medical conditions. 

Labor Department employees told Government Executive last month that the agency is facing a backlog of hundreds of reasonable accommodation requests, and that they have waited months or longer for the agency to address their cases. Faced with this backlog, the department is looking to roll out artificial intelligence tools to help triage its workload. 

Reps. Brian Fitzpatrick, R-Pa., and Yassamin Ansari, D-Ariz., spearheaded a letter signed by 40 of their House colleagues, asking acting Labor Secretary Keith Sonderling about the backlog in RA cases.  

Lawmakers say their offices are hearing from employees that the Labor Department is “failing to provide qualified employees with disabilities with timely, consistent, and effective reasonable accommodations,” and that it may not be fulfilling its legal obligations under the 1973 Rehabilitation Act. 

“Delays in providing accommodations may prevent employees from fully performing their official duties, reduce productivity, negatively affect employee morale and retention, and increase the Department's exposure to Equal Employment Opportunity complaints, grievances, and litigation,” they wrote. 

Agencies are required to provide RAs to workers with disabilities, unless doing so would result in “undue hardship.”

Employees have complained about similar delays at several other federal agencies. Those complaints have led to multiple lawsuits. But Labor Department employees say the delays they're experiencing are unusual for an agency charged with protecting the workplace rights of workers with disabilities.

“The Department of Labor serves as the federal government's principal agency responsible for protecting workers' rights and enforcing federal workplace laws. Accordingly, the Department should serve as a model employer by ensuring its own employees receive prompt, transparent, individualized, and legally compliant consideration of reasonable accommodation requests,” the lawmakers wrote.  

Lawmakers wrote that interim accommodations “are infrequently considered while requests remain pending,” contrary to Equal Employment Opportunity Commission guidance, and that staffing shortages have contributed to significant processing delays and growing backlogs. 

Several employees told Government Executive that they were hired for fully remote positions, or only had to report to the office twice per two-week pay period, but were instructed to return to the office full-time under the Trump administration. President Donald Trump’s first-day memo required most federal employees to work onsite — but exempted employees with disabilities.

The department saw a surge in reasonable accommodation requests following Trump's return-to-office mandate, but its human resources workforce has been decimated by voluntary separation incentives, and has been unable to keep up. 

“If accurate, these staffing challenges raise serious questions regarding the Department's ability to satisfy its obligations under the Rehabilitation Act and provide employees with equal employment opportunity,” the lawmakers wrote. 

One Labor Department employee told Government Executive that his RA request to work from home about half of the time was approved in February, but that he is still waiting for the agency to order an ergonomic chair and standing desk that was also part of his accommodation request. 

Lawmakers say they’ve also heard reports of “prolonged delays” in employees receiving ergonomic equipment, assistive technology, software, and other accommodations necessary to do their jobs. 

“In many instances, employees report receiving little or no communication regarding the status of their requests, leaving them uncertain whether required,” they wrote. 

Lawmakers say they are “particularly concerned” by delays reported by employees seeking telework as a reasonable accommodation. EEOC and the Office of Personnel Management told agencies in February that they should not take a “blanket approach” to rescinding or denying telework accommodations.

OPM Director Scott Kupor estimated in a January blog post that about 10% of federal employees have received exemptions from Trump’s return-to-office orders.

“Returning to in-person work and upholding disability rights are not mutually exclusive,” Kupor said in a Feb. 11 press release.

Among their questions, lawmakers are asking Sonderling to provide current processing times for RA requests, how many requests are still pending, and what “oversight mechanisms exist to ensure consistent application of reasonable accommodation policies across all Department agencies and offices.” Lawmakers are seeking a response no later than Oct. 16. 

Meanwhile, thousands of Labor Department employees’ sensitive personal and medical information was improperly shared to someone’s personal email account, according to an internal memo about the incident. 

The Labor Department recently notified more than 3,000 employees about an “internal incident” on July 22, in which an email containing a spreadsheet of personally identifiable information related to employees' reasonable accommodations requests was sent to an “individual's personal email address outside of the DOL domain.”

Following an initial investigation, the department “discovered that more than one email" containing PII or protected health information (PHI) was sent to the same personal email address outside of the DOL domain.

According to the Labor Department, the individual “had authorized access to the information in the performance of their DOL duties,” but did not have the authority to send the information to a personal email address.