Openness to Disability-Based Telework Grew in US Courts in 2025

The US government and other major employers like Amazon.com Inc., Deloitte LLP, and JPMorgan Chase led the continued push in 2025 for workers to return to the office from at-home arrangements established during the Covid-19 pandemic.

But court rulings from the past year show federal judges remain increasingly receptive to remote work as a potential disability accommodation and leery of categorical in-person attendance rules.

Though the outcomes were mixed, the decisions since January reflect a continuing shift in analysis spurred by the flood of—and lessons from—Covid-related telework. Judges are reviewing remote-work bias claims more like other American with Disabilities Act accommodation cases, a trend likely to continue into next year.

They’re no longer giving strong deference to employment policies setting physical presence in the office as a core requirement, as was standard prior to the pandemic, attorneys say. Courts instead expanded their embrace of the feasibility of working remotely, focusing on whether telework would eliminate an essential job function. Employees often weren’t reaching that stage in the ADA accommodation analysis in the past.

With remote work among the most regularly sought forms of disability accommodation, employers are wise to treat work-from-home requests by disabled workers with individual attention, the attorneys say.

“Remote work is what I’m hearing about” most often, Syracuse University College of Law’s Katherine A. Macfarlane said. Yet some employers remain staunch in their resistance to telework as an accommodation, thinking disabled workers are getting something they don’t deserve, she said.

The disability bias cases this year show judges are taking telework more seriously and seeing physical presence isn’t required for all jobs, the professor said.

Industry, Job Can Matter

The disabilities for which workers seek remote-work arrangements run the gamut from mobility issues to light sensitivities to substance abuse.

Mental health disorders were also a common disability seen in the 2025 cases, including a suit recently settled by Google Inc. Medical conditions or treatments that leave workers immunocompromised also appeared frequently in litigation. An Amtrak employee undergoing chemotherapy, for example, was able to advance his disability bias claims over remote work.

Covid’s lessons still apply even though the pandemic ended, as “we’re not done with airborne illnesses,” Macfarlane said.

While judges tended to back physical-presence requirements for workers in the medical field, denying telework to someone with a desk job generally won’t pass muster without a specific justification, Holland & Hart LLP’s Joseph Robertson said.

Leader roles are also jobs that might be viewed as needing to be done from the office, though that’s less true when the whole team works remotely, the management-side lawyer said.

Case-by-Case Approach

Regardless of job or industry, lawsuits are turning on whether an employee can perform their duties from home or if being at their workplace is truly essential, furthering the swing of the past few years, employee-side attorney Geoffrey Mort said.

Courts, bit by bit, have stopped “looking askance” at telework accommodations as a general rule, said Mort who is of counsel to Kraus & Zuchlewski LLP.

The continued trend brings attention to some ADA hallmarks, including the essential-functions test and the need for an individualized assessment when a worker seeks accommodation. Mort said he foresees more of the same in 2026.

“We will continue to see a gradual move” to recognizing remote work as a reasonable arrangement for workers with disabilities as courts increasingly shift away from deferring to general in-office requirements and analyze requests on an individual basis, the lawyer said.

Employers who believe a general policy trumps a worker’s disability needs have it wrong, Macfarlane said. “It’s the other way around.”

Skipping individualized assessments leads to needless accommodation denials and litigation and forces people out of the workplace for no reason, the professor said, lamenting that some 2025 cases reveal an underlying cruelty that’s “sad to see.”

The plaintiffs in those cases experienced comments about their condition or accommodation, Macfarlane said. People increasingly are working successfully from home, “so where is the animosity coming from?”

Avoid Categorical ‘No’

Another ADA hallmark is that the law only requires a reasonable accommodation, not necessarily one the employee prefers.

Employers do better when they consider other options instead of just giving “a stark no” to work-from-home requests, Robertson said. Offering ergonomic solutions, additional breaks, or other adjustments as alternatives to working remotely can be reasonable, he said.

The 2025 decisions show employers have more success pointing to in-person attendance rules when they’re set in writing and enforced consistently, Robertson said. Judges still show some deference in those situations, but they’re skeptical when they see inconsistent enforcement, he said.

Many RTO policies try to make in-person attendance “per se essential,” but most courts are rejecting that, Mort said. In-person requirements must be supported by specific reasons, not general things like camaraderie, he said.