The court split the ruling - one theory advanced, two got thrown out over timing and proof
A federal judge let a State Department employee's disability accommodation claim move forward while dismissing her retaliation and disparate treatment claims.
The employee, a Foreign Affairs Officer, said she developed a condition often called "Havana Syndrome" after a 2016 injury and was diagnosed in 2021. For years she worked remotely from Arizona under a formal agreement so she could get treatment at the Mayo Clinic, earning strong reviews throughout.
That changed in March 2023, when a supervisor and a resources chief opened a review of her accommodations. She alleged fourteen adverse actions followed, ending with the loss of her remote-work arrangement. The department said its "operational posture and work demands had returned to pre-COVID norms" and that she had to return to Washington.
She sued under the Rehabilitation Act, the federal law barring disability discrimination in government jobs, on three theories: failure to accommodate, disparate treatment, and retaliation. The court kept only the first.
The department argued it had already offered a reasonable accommodation - a detail to another bureau where she could still work from home. Employers may pick among reasonable accommodations, the court noted, but reassignment is generally "an option to be considered only after other efforts have failed." Because she plausibly alleged she could keep doing her own job remotely, that claim survived. She alleged the detail would have "set her up for failure," a characterization the court did not adopt.
The disparate treatment claim did not survive. She pointed to no discriminatory remarks, and her comparison to non-disabled coworkers rested only on "information and belief." The court also held that repackaging an accommodation denial as separate discrimination just duplicates the accommodation claim.
The retaliation claim failed on timing. The accommodation review began March 1, 2023, but she did not file her Equal Employment Opportunity complaint until April 3. Because the alleged retaliation started before that protected activity, the court found no causal link and pointed to the department's neutral explanation, which she did not rebut.
The signal for HR: swapping one accommodation for another may not be enough when an employee can plausibly do the same job with the arrangement in place. And adverse steps set in motion before an employee complains are hard to tie to that complaint.
The court dropped her conceded request for punitive damages but let her pursue emotional-distress damages. This was a ruling on a motion to dismiss, not a decision on the merits: the surviving claim still must be proven, and she has thirty days to amend other parts of her case.
