The Second Circuit (which covers New York, Connecticut and Vermont) recently revived an employee’s ADA and NYC Human Rights Law (NYCHRL) failure-to-accommodate claims, which were based on his employer’s denial of his requests to work from home full-time, and then – when that request was denied – to work from home 3 days a week and 2 days in-person at a different office, due to a number of respiratory conditions (such conditions were apparently exacerbated by his commute and the lack of ventilation and adequate temperature controls in the employee’s current office).

In vacating a lower court’s dismissal of these claims, the Second Circuit noted three significant alleged facts:

  1. the employee was able to perform his essential job functions working completely from home during the COVID-19 pandemic;
  2. he was permitted to work from home 2 days a week even after other employees were required to return to the office after the pandemic, further suggesting that he could perform his essential job functions without going to the office; and
  3. the employee’s manager supported his requested accommodations to work from home and/or a different office.

The court held that taken together, these facts made it plausible that the employee’s requested accommodations would have enabled the employee to perform his job’s essential functions and therefore, his failure-to-accommodate claim should be revived.

This decision is a welcome one for employers in the Second Circuit (especially those in NYC, which has a more employee-friendly standard for disability accommodations) and a notable departure from a decision handed down from the Fifth Circuit earlier this year, which held that full-time remote work is “rarely” a reasonable accommodation under the ADA.

You can read the Second Circuit’s decision here: CangroNYC072426072726.pdf