Disability Discrimination and ADA Accommodation

What is disability discrimination at work?

Disability discrimination happens when an employer treats you worse because of a medical condition, or refuses to make a reasonable adjustment that would let you do the job. Both are unlawful in New York, and the second one, called failure to accommodate, is the more common claim.

Most people picture discrimination as a slur or an obvious firing. In disability cases it usually looks quieter than that. A request goes to HR and nothing happens. A schedule change is approved and then quietly reversed. A performance review that was strong for four years turns critical two months after you disclose a diagnosis. A job offer disappears after a post-offer physical.

The law reaches all of that. It also reaches punishment for asking. You do not need to win the accommodation request to be protected from retaliation for making it.

What is a reasonable accommodation?

A reasonable accommodation is a change to a job, a workplace, or the way work is normally done that lets a person with a disability perform the job. It is not special treatment and it is not a favor; it is a legal obligation.

Accommodations that come up repeatedly in real cases:

• A modified or part-time schedule, or a shift change to accommodate treatment or medication timing
• Remote or hybrid work where in-person presence is not truly essential
• Finite, time-limited leave for surgery, treatment, or recovery
• Physical changes: an ergonomic chair, a standing desk, an accessible workstation, a ground-floor location
• Assistive technology such as screen readers, captioning, or amplified phones
• Reallocating a marginal job function that is not essential to the role
• Permission to sit, to take additional short breaks, or to keep water or food at a workstation for a medical reason
• A quieter workspace, noise-cancelling equipment, or written rather than verbal instructions
• Reassignment to a vacant position you are qualified for, when no accommodation in the current role works
• Adjusting an attendance policy that would otherwise penalize disability-related absences

The employer does not have to give you your first choice. It has to give you something that actually works, or explain why nothing does.

Which disability-related conduct is unlawful, and which is not?

Unlawful conduct usually falls into one of five buckets. Understanding which one fits your situation shapes the entire case.

Failure to accommodate You asked for an adjustment, the employer denied it, ignored it, or never seriously considered alternatives, and a workable accommodation existed.

Disparate treatment You were fired, demoted, passed over, cut in hours, or disciplined because of your condition, your record of a condition, or the employer’s perception that you have one.

Harassment Comments, mockery, or hostility tied to your disability that alters your working conditions.

Retaliation Punishment for requesting an accommodation, complaining about disability discrimination, taking protected leave, or supporting a coworker’s complaint. Retaliation claims are frequently stronger than the underlying claim because the timeline is documented. If this is what happened to you, see our page on retaliation and whistleblower claims.

Unlawful medical inquiries Asking disability-related questions or requiring a medical exam before a conditional job offer, or during employment when the inquiry is not job-related and consistent with business necessity. Disclosing your medical information to coworkers who have no need to know can also be a violation.

What is generally not unlawful is just as important:

• Firing or disciplining you for a genuine performance or conduct problem that has nothing to do with your condition
• Declining an accommodation that would eliminate an essential function of the job rather than adjust how it is performed
• Refusing an accommodation that would impose a real undue hardship
• Including you in a legitimate, documented reduction in force that hit similarly situated employees without disabilities
• Enforcing a uniformly applied conduct rule that is job-related and consistent with business necessity, even where a disability contributed to the conduct

A weak disability case is one where the employer had a clean, contemporaneous, consistently applied reason. A strong one is where the reason appeared late, changed over time, or was not applied to anyone else.

Which laws apply, and how do New York State and City law go further?

Three layers of law protect employees with disabilities in New York, and they do not protect equally. In most cases state and city law are the better vehicle.

Federal (the ADA) Title I of the Americans with Disabilities Act covers employers with 15 or more employees. It defines disability as a physical or mental impairment that substantially limits a major life activity, a record of such an impairment, or being regarded as having one. The ADA Amendments Act of 2008 directed courts to read that definition broadly. Compensatory and punitive damages are capped by statute based on employer size.

New York State (the NYSHRL) The New York State Human Rights Law applies to employers of every size, including the small businesses that make up much of Suffolk and Nassau County. Its definition of disability is significantly broader than the federal one: an impairment that prevents the exercise of a normal bodily function, or that is demonstrable by medically accepted clinical or laboratory diagnostic techniques. There is no requirement that the impairment “substantially limit” anything. The 2019 amendments also directed that the statute be construed liberally, in line with the city law, and made attorneys’ fees and punitive damages available in employment discrimination cases.

New York City (the NYCHRL) The New York City Human Rights Law applies to employers with four or more employees and is, by its own terms, construed more liberally than its federal and state counterparts. Its provisions are read independently, and federal case law sets a floor rather than a ceiling. It defines disability as any physical, medical, mental, or psychological impairment, or a history of one, with no severity threshold. It also imposes an explicit procedural duty that federal law only implies: the cooperative dialogue requirement in § 8-107(28). Damages are not subject to the federal caps.

The practical consequence: an employee whose condition is too mild or too episodic to clear the federal bar may still have a strong claim under state law, and a stronger one still if the job is in one of the five boroughs.

Who is “disabled” and “qualified” under these laws?

To bring a disability claim you generally have to show two things: that you have a covered disability, and that you are qualified for the job.

“Qualified” means you can perform the essential functions of the position, with or without a reasonable accommodation. Essential functions are the core duties the job exists to accomplish, not everything listed in the job description. Courts look at what the employer says is essential, the written job description, how much time is actually spent on the function, the consequences of not performing it, whether other employees hold the same role without doing it, and the experience of past incumbents.

This distinction decides cases. If lifting fifty pounds is genuinely essential to a warehouse job, an employer does not have to eliminate it. If it appears in the job description but nobody in the role has lifted anything in three years, the employer’s position is much weaker.

Two federal wrinkles worth knowing. First, if you are covered only as “regarded as” having a disability, the ADA does not require an accommodation, but it still forbids adverse treatment. Second, the ADA also protects you from discrimination based on your association with a person with a disability, such as a parent or child, though that provision does not entitle you to an accommodation for their care.

How does the interactive process work?

Once an employer knows you need an adjustment because of a medical condition, it has to talk to you about it. This is the interactive process, and it is a two-way, good-faith obligation.

There are no magic words. You do not have to say “ADA,” “accommodation,” or name a statute. Telling your supervisor that your medication makes early mornings unsafe and asking for a later start is a request. That said, put it in writing anyway. Email creates a date and a record.

The employer’s side of the process typically involves confirming the limitation, asking what would help, exploring alternatives if your proposal does not work, and deciding. An employer that shuts down the conversation, sits on the request for months, or refuses to consider anything other than what you first proposed has a serious problem if the case is litigated. Where the process breaks down, courts ask which side caused the breakdown.

In New York City the requirement is codified. Section 8-107(28) requires the employer to engage in a cooperative dialogue about the accommodation, potential alternatives, and any hardship, and then to give you a written final determination identifying any accommodation granted or denied. The absence of that written determination is independently useful evidence.

What do you have to prove, and what evidence matters?

You have to connect your condition to what the employer did. In a failure-to-accommodate claim, that generally means showing you have a disability, the employer knew about it, you could perform the essential functions with a reasonable accommodation, and the employer refused to provide one. In a discrimination or retaliation claim, it means showing that the adverse action was because of your disability or your protected request.

Evidence that consistently moves these cases:

• The written request itself: the email or form, with its date
• The employer’s response, or the absence of one, including the NYCHRL written determination if the job is in New York City
• Medical documentation describing the limitation and the accommodation needed, not just the diagnosis
• The job description as written, alongside what the role actually requires day to day
• Performance reviews before and after you disclosed or requested: a sharp turn is powerful
• Timing between your request and the discipline, schedule cut, or firing
• Comparators: employees without disabilities who were allowed the same schedule, remote arrangement, or leniency
• Shifting explanations from the employer across HR, the termination letter, and the unemployment filing
• Text messages and internal chat, which are often far more candid than email
• Witnesses: coworkers who heard the comments or saw the request ignored

Preserve everything now. Forward relevant messages to a personal account before your access is cut off, and download your own medical records. Do not take confidential company documents you have no right to; take what is yours and what you legitimately received.

When can an employer lawfully refuse an accommodation?

An employer can refuse when the accommodation would impose an undue hardship, significant difficulty or expense measured against the employer’s size, resources, and operations. This is a real defense, but it is narrower than employers usually assume. Cost alone rarely carries it for a large company, and “it would be unfair to other employees” is not an undue hardship.

An employer can also refuse when no accommodation would let you perform the essential functions, when you would pose a direct threat to health or safety that cannot be reduced by accommodation, or when the only thing that would work is indefinite leave with no expected return date.

Note what an employer may not do even when it grants a request: it may not charge you for the accommodation, may not force you to accept one you did not want, and may not treat the accommodation as a black mark in your performance file.

Is leave a reasonable accommodation, and how does FMLA fit in?

Yes. Finite, defined leave can be a reasonable accommodation, even after other leave entitlements are exhausted. What the law generally does not require is indefinite leave with no anticipated end date. The difference between “I need eight more weeks and my surgeon will clear me on this date” and “I don’t know when I’ll be back” often decides the claim.

Three separate systems can overlap, and employers routinely confuse them:

1. The FMLA provides eligible employees up to 12 weeks of unpaid, job-protected leave in a 12-month period for a serious health condition. It applies to employers with 50 or more employees, and you must have worked at least 12 months and 1,250 hours in the prior year.
2. New York short-term disability benefits can provide partial wage replacement for an off-the-job illness or injury. New York Paid Family Leave, by contrast, does not cover your own medical condition. It covers caring for a family member, bonding with a new child, and certain military family needs.
3. Accommodation leave under the ADA and NYSHRL is a separate obligation that can begin where FMLA leave ends.

A common and costly employer mistake is treating exhaustion of FMLA leave as an automatic termination trigger. Firing someone the day their FMLA runs out, without considering whether a short additional leave was reasonable, is one of the more frequently litigated failures to accommodate.

What damages can you recover for a failure to accommodate?

Damages in a disability case are meant to put you where you would have been had the discrimination not occurred, plus compensation for the harm it caused.

• Back pay: wages, overtime, bonuses, commissions, and the value of lost benefits from the adverse action to resolution
• Front pay: future lost earnings where reinstatement is impractical
• Compensatory damages for emotional distress, which in disability cases often carry real weight because the harm is documented in medical records
• Punitive damages where the employer acted with malice or reckless indifference. Federal punitive and compensatory damages are capped together by statute according to employer size; state and city claims are not subject to those caps
• Attorneys’ fees and costs, which shift to the employer when you prevail
• Injunctive relief: reinstatement, or an order requiring the accommodation

Where a termination is involved, the analysis overlaps heavily with a wrongful termination claim, and both theories are often pleaded together. If you have already been handed a severance agreement, have it reviewed before signing. See severance and employment contracts.

What should you do to protect your accommodation request?

1. Put the request in writing, even if you already made it verbally A short email to your manager and HR (what the limitation is, what you are asking for, and the date) is the single most valuable document in these cases.
2. Get documentation from your provider that describes the work limitation and the accommodation needed. It does not need to hand over your full medical history.
3. Follow up in writing if nothing happens. “Following up on my March 3 request” builds the timeline for you.
4. Save everything now Emails, texts, the job description, performance reviews, the handbook’s accommodation policy, and any denial.
5. Write down what happened while it is fresh: dates, who said what, who else was present.
6. Do not sign a severance agreement or a release immediately Signing usually extinguishes your claims. You are generally entitled to time to consider it, and workers 40 and older receive a statutory review period for certain agreements.
7. Keep doing your job to the standard you can meet Employers build defenses out of the weeks after a request.
8. Calendar the deadlines and talk to a lawyer The 300-day EEOC window in New York moves faster than people expect.

How we handle disability and accommodation cases

We represent employees and executives in the great majority of our matters, and employers in a limited number of them. We run a conflict check before taking any case. Cases are evaluated first for the strongest available theory, which in New York is frequently the state or city human rights law rather than the ADA, because the definitions are broader, small employers are covered, and damages are not capped.

Tim Alamgir spent years defending employers inside an AmLaw 200 labor and employment practice before moving to the employee side. That background shapes how we build accommodation cases: we know how employers document the interactive process after the fact, how they value exposure, and where an undue hardship defense tends to fall apart under scrutiny.

We handle these matters from the initial demand through agency charges and, where necessary, litigation in state and federal court. If your claim also involves a protected characteristic beyond disability, our workplace discrimination practice covers those theories in depth.

Fee arrangements depend on the matter. Many employee-side cases are handled on a contingency fee basis, where there is no fee unless we recover for you and case costs and disbursements are advanced by the firm and reimbursed from any recovery. Other matters are handled on a retainer, and we tell you in writing which applies before you commit to anything. The initial consultation is always free and confidential. The initial evaluation is free and confidential. You can reach us at 631.498.7984 or through our contact page.