She says her request went in the day she signed. Day one came with nothing
A registrar asked Yale for an ergonomic desk before her first day. She says she never got it while she worked there.
A woman who worked as registrar at Yale Divinity School sued Yale University in the US District Court for the District of Connecticut on August 14, 2026, alleging the university never gave her the workstation her doctors had prescribed and never engaged with her in good faith about it. Her complaint brings claims under the Americans with Disabilities Act, Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act of 1973 and the Connecticut Fair Employment Practices Act, the state law barring disability discrimination in employment.
The filing says she brought a decade of higher education administration experience to the job, including more than seven years at Columbia University and registrar and dean roles at two theological seminaries. It says she has been diagnosed with hemiplegic migraine, which the complaint describes as a rare and serious neurological condition that mimics stroke symptoms, including fluctuating one-sided paralysis, cognitive impairment and severe pain.
Her accommodation was a defined equipment list, according to the complaint: a particular ergonomic task chair, a rocking foot machine, a keyboard tray and adaptive mouse, a specific height-adjustable desk and ergonomic software. The filing says a licensed occupational therapist had prescribed the items and that every prior employer had provided them, including one seminary with fewer than 20 staff that she says arranged the full setup within weeks of her request.
The date HR readers will fix on is July 3, 2024. That is the day she signed and returned her offer letter, and the complaint says it is also the day she submitted her accommodation request and medical documentation to Yale's institutional equity and accessibility office. Her start date was August 1, 2024.
Yale routed the request to an outside vendor that administers accommodation requests, the filing says. The complaint alleges the vendor told her on July 19, 2024 that her 2017 occupational therapy records were "outdated" and that it "cannot start services" before her start date. She alleges this reflected a Yale policy applied no matter when a disability was disclosed, and that Yale's website had encouraged early disclosure by promising to "fast track" requests from people with permanent disabilities.
She reported for her first day with no accommodations in place, the filing says. It says her assigned office had an uneven floor beneath the desk, which facilities staff confirmed, and overhead lighting that aggravated her migraines.
Then the loop. The complaint says she sent photographs and a detailed ergonomic description to the vendor's consultant on August 8, 2024. It alleges that during a phone evaluation the consultant acknowledged she had not yet reviewed the medical documentation and dismissed the condition as merely "getting headaches." On September 5, 2024, the filing says, the vendor proposed substitute furniture that matched neither of her doctors' specifications. She says she objected, the vendor told her to raise it with Yale, and Yale sent her back to the vendor.
She filed a formal written complaint with Yale's staff accommodations manager on August 28, 2024, according to the filing. It says the reply the next day restated the policy and offered a meeting, that she wrote back with questions and asked to meet, and that the meeting never happened. The complaint alleges no Yale HR representative spoke with her directly about her concerns before she left.
On August 30, 2024, the filing says, a Yale Health clinician recorded "new onset of severe back pain, likely due to poor ergonomic setup at work" and referred her to workers' compensation. She alleges remote work was approved only after she filed that claim, and not because of her medical documentation or her internal complaint. By September 11, 2024, the complaint says, Yale Employee Health had limited her to no more than two hours of on-site work a day.
A desk arrived on November 13, 2024. The complaint says it was not the model her doctors had specified and that it came without consulting her or her medical providers. She alleges Yale then cited a vendor-approval policy that had gone unmentioned across five months of correspondence, told her another medical evaluation would be required to get the correct desk, and described her documentation as "out of date." The prescribed desk never arrived while she was actively employed, the filing says.
A week later, on November 20, 2024, construction drilling outside her office triggered a severe episode, according to the complaint. She began continuous medical leave on December 9, 2024. The filing says she submitted her resignation on April 15, 2025, effective June 15, 2025, citing medical reasons that prevented her return, and alleges her physicians had determined she could no longer safely live alone in Connecticut.
The allegations have not been tested in court, and no judge has ruled.
