The Rehabilitation Act gives disabled employees the right to accommodations which allow them to perform their job. If an agency denies a federal employee a reasonable accommodation, the employee must contact the agency EEO office within 45 days. When an employer ignores a request for a reasonable accommodation, the 45-day deadline for initiating a discrimination complaint begins when a “reasonably prudent person” would believe that the request is being denied. When an agency’s denial is not explicitly stated, the overall facts will be considered on a case-by-case basis. When the agency ignores an accommodation request that requires a date-specific event (such as the request for accommodations to attend a conference), the deadline runs from the date of the specific event.
After contacting the EEO office, the employee should carefully follow the deadlines for filing a formal complaint (15-days after receiving the notice) and to seek review by an administrative judge at the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission or a federal court.
During the agency’s investigation of the EEO complaint, the employee should explain why he or she should have been given the accommodation. This explanation should include a description of the employee’s diagnosis, prognosis and the major life activities affected by the disability. Most important, the employee should include a description and documents showing that he or she asked for and was denied – either explicitly or implicitly by being ignored – the accommodation. The employee should also show how the denial of the accommodation has affected him or her. It is important to ask the treating health care professionals to describe the impact of the agency’s failure to accommodate. For example, the denial of the accommodation might cause the employee’s disability to worsen, to progress more quickly, and to have a significant long-term impact on the employee. Alternatively, the denial of accommodations may ultimately cause the employee to leave the job. In this case, the employee might leave the agency to take disability retirement.
When an employee takes disability retirement because of the denial, the employee should amend her complaint to include the involuntary disability retirement (again, within 45 days). By doing so, the employee can argue for a larger award if the claim succeeds. The employee may be entitled to an award for future income which the employee will not earn because the agency has effectively denied the employee the ability to work by not providing reasonable accommodation.
** This information is provided by the attorneys at Passman & Kaplan, P.C., a law firm dedicated to the representation of federal employees worldwide. For more information on Passman & Kaplan, P.C., go to http://www.passmanandkaplan.com. **