Internal emails about the worker's caseload request just reopened his accommodation claim
An Ohio appeals court revived part of a state worker's disability lawsuit, finding a genuine dispute over how his employer handled his caseload request.
The Court of Appeals of Ohio ruled on August 4, 2026, in a lawsuit brought by a compensation claims specialist against the Ohio Bureau of Workers' Compensation. The employee said his growing workload worsened his anxiety and depression, and that the agency ignored his repeated requests for help.
The result was a split. The court left most of the earlier ruling in the agency's favor in place but reopened one claim that should give any HR team pause: whether the employer engaged in a good-faith interactive process - the back-and-forth required when a worker asks for a disability accommodation.
The employee began asking in 2021 to swap half his caseload with a co-worker, arguing he had been handed the more complex claims. Management saw it differently. Internal emails showed supervisors treating his complaints as a performance problem rather than an accommodation request. One claims director wrote to a colleague that his email felt like "a way to catch her in a snare with his language about him being discriminated, harassed, retaliated against, etc." Another employee replied, "He is creating his record. Call me."
The agency later placed him on a 14-day action plan. A supervisor's affidavit described it as "a tool . . . to address a significant backlog of overdue cases and tasks." The employee left work on his first required in-office day and went on extended leave.
The court found a genuine dispute over whether the agency seriously weighed the workload request or treated it as a performance problem. That was enough to send the failure-to-accommodate claim back for further proceedings.
The rest of the case went the agency's way. The court held that his paid five-day suspension and the action plan were not adverse employment actions, because they did not change his pay, hours, or core duties. Revoking his telework arrangement did not count either, the court said, noting the agency's policy stated that teleworking "does not affect an employee's basic terms and conditions of employment" and could be modified at any time. His discrimination and retaliation claims failed on the same ground.
The court set out what good-faith engagement looks like, quoting earlier Ohio case law: an employer shows good faith when it meets with the worker, asks about their limitations, asks what they want, shows "some indication of considering the employee's request," and discusses alternatives "if the initial request was too burdensome."
