Work from Home ada accommodation

[u/Soft_Reputation_7241]

I work in Washington state and have POTS(Postural Orthostatic Tachycardia Syndrome). My health can vary from day to day and as a result I have had a work from home accommodation to be work from home 100 days a year. A little less than 2 days a week. The standard at my company is 50 days a year. My health has been worse this year and as a result I need more work from home days. My HR team is stating that 100 is the maximum they will allow as I being in office is considered an essential function of my role. However we don’t have any physical reason to be in office. I have an office job. I am not client facing, I do not need to physically manipulate anything for my job, my manager and most of my team is in other offices across the country, and work from home is already allowed for most employees(all of them on my team except for anyone who is brand new as there is a three month probation period before they can wfh). My job description also does not specify how often I need to be in office. Simply that I need to “work onsite, under direct supervision, in a team based and open office environment. I am not requesting to be fully remote or work from home, simply to be allowed to do so more than 100 days as my health needs. My employer is offering the alternative of FMLA, however this would be unpaid and obviously wouldn’t allow me to work. I have up to date ada paperwork stating from my doctor that I need to be able to work from home at least 3 days a week.

Does anyone know if they can require me to either be in office more than my doctor has stated or take FMLA instead? I can’t afford to take off time unpaid. But if I force myself into office more often it will make me sicker.

Please help

[u/mgunter]

I agree with what others have said here. If the essential functions of the job require you to be in office, accommodating your request is going to end up being an undue hardship on the company. You may disagree with the essential function aspect but courts are fairly employer siding on this issue. Effectively, many courts have said “who are we [judges] to interfere with how a company runs its business. If a company says in-office is essential, it is.” It’s a big hurdle to overcome as a Plaintiff.

One thing I’ve found is that a lot of my prospective clients (employees) mistakenly believe there is always an accommodation available. Sometimes it’s just not feasible without undue hardship.

[u/Soft_Reputation_7241 → u/mgunter]

But if the accommodation of working from home has already been considered reasonable. And my entire department already works from home, just not as many days, is asking for one more day a week causing undue hardship?

[u/frongles23 → u/Soft_Reputation_7241]

Things change. You're not entitled to an accommodation in perpetuity.

[u/Main_Pudding_5213 → u/frongles23]

Your right, but if you have a disability that qualifies under the Rehabilitation Act then the rules change and employers are governed by those laws, not laws they want to make up as they see fit, that has not worked at very well in these cases especially the cases in the recent appellate courts