Highly skilled epidemiologists and analysts at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention received a late-night on email Sept. 15 that prior approvals for long-term telework, including even reasonable accommodations for the disabled, were revoked, pending clarification of an August Health and Human Services policy update.
The decision followed a January order directing agencies to end most remote work. But disability law does not bend to internal handbooks or political winds.
The CDC’s move triggered immediate questions under the Rehabilitation Act’s requirement for individualized assessments and an interactive process, not blanket rules. After strong pushback from unions, the CDC walked back this initiative, at least for now.
The overarching policy is a major lawsuit waiting to happen, for which taxpayers will pay in the form of higher damages and turnover costs. And that is before we even consider that the federal record shows that well-run remote work delivers measurable benefits.
Federal agencies cannot replace individualized dialogue with a one-size-fits-all edict when an employee requests accommodation. The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission’s own guidance states that working from home may be a reasonable accommodation when job duties allow it, and that employers must assess each request on a case-by-case basis, not by category. Executive Order 13164 requires every agency to maintain effective written procedures for processing accommodation requests, a point reinforced in the commission’s policy guidance and its questions and answers.
The Office of Personnel Management reiterates that reasonable accommodations remain legally required for qualified employees with disabilities, including when telework is the effective adjustment. When an agency announces that long-term telework is “no longer considered” a reasonable accommodation, as reported in the CDC email and in follow-on coverage, it reads like a categorical prohibition that conflicts with those obligations and invites complaints that the agency skipped the required process. The Rehabilitation Act’s core protections, including Section 501, apply to federal employers regardless of shifting workplace policies.
Recent appellate decisions underscore the risk. In 2024, the D.C. Circuit in Ali v. Regan held that a take-it-or-leave-it approach to accommodations presents a jury question because reasonableness turns on facts, not agency preferences. The Sixth Circuit’s Mosby-Meachem decision affirmed a jury verdict that telework was a reasonable, time-limited accommodation for an in-house attorney on medical bed rest, because the essential functions could be performed remotely for that period.
Courts do not guarantee telework for every role. They do insist that agencies engage with the employee’s duties and limitations rather than issue blanket decrees like CDC’s late-night email.
The financial exposure is real — in federal employment equal opportunity cases, remedies include back pay, front pay, compensatory damages, attorney’s fees and injunctive relief. Compensatory and punitive damages are capped by statute, but back pay and fees are not, and the law reduces exposure only when the employer can prove a good-faith interactive process. Dozens of meritorious individual claims can aggregate into seven- and eight-figure liabilities once back pay periods, fee awards and compliance monitoring stack up. Every dollar in avoidable remedies increases agency operating costs that flow into appropriations and, ultimately, public borrowing. That is a bad trade for a policy adopted without the individualized review the law requires.
The pause also runs headlong into what agencies have already learned about telework’s value when managed with discipline. The most recent governmentwide assessment found that telework eligibility rose to 57 percent of the federal workforce in fiscal 2023 and documented agency-reported gains in recruitment, retention and productivity when telework is part of a deliberate hybrid strategy. The same report counted roughly 7 percent of the workforce in fully remote positions by the end of 2023, reflecting mission-driven job design rather than ad hoc exceptions.
Evidence from a large randomized trial examined by the National Bureau of Economic Research found that hybrid schedules cut attrition by about one-third without harming performance, a result that speaks directly to agencies competing for scarce technical talent. Lower attrition means fewer vacancies and less institutional knowledge drainage, both of which save money.
Taxpayers benefit when telework discipline aligns with real-estate decisions. Testimony to Congress from the Government Accountability Office showed that, during sampled weeks in early 2023, 17 of 24 headquarters buildings ran at 25 percent capacity or less; agencies spend about $2 billion annually to operate and maintain owned office buildings in addition to about $5 billion to lease space regardless of utilization. A smart telework posture tied to footprint reductions could capture those fixed-cost savings without sacrificing mission delivery.
In contrast, yanking accommodations and forcing attendance where location does not affect outcomes trades proven savings for litigation exposure and turnover costs. The return-to-office push has political energy, but it does not change the math agencies face when underused buildings drain budgets.
The broader debate has been clear for years; analysts have chronicled how indiscriminate return-to-office mandates waste money and weaken recruitment while ignoring empirical gains in productivity and service delivery under well-designed hybrid models. The CDC’s blanket pause takes the worst version of return-to-office politics and applies it to the very population Congress intended to protect. It offers no operational upside, risks losing trained specialists, and all but guarantees legal fights the public will pay to litigate and then to unwind.
The fix is straightforward and fiscally conservative. Restore individualized review immediately. Reopen the interactive process on every paused or revoked request. Rather than paying to heat and cool empty floors, align workforce posture with real-estate strategy to capture the savings that government auditors identified. Use the federal evidence base that two separate government agencies have already assembled. Add agency-level performance metrics, and manage telework like any other tool. That is how leaders reduce risk, retain talent and protect the public purse.
Canceling telework accommodations for employees with disabilities is not prudent management. The CDC’s blanket pause to telework offers no benefit and guarantees higher costs. If leaders want to protect taxpayers and deliver results, they should restore lawful accommodations and let data, not optics, drive workforce design.
Gleb Tsipursky, Ph.D., serves as the CEO of the hybrid work consultancy Disaster Avoidance Experts and authored the best-seller “Returning to the Office and Leading Hybrid and Remote Teams.”
