2026
Disability accommodation claims filed with the EEOC have reached record levels in 2026, driven by three categories that have grown significantly since 2020: remote work requests, mental health conditions, and long COVID. For small and mid-size employers in Tennessee, Georgia, Florida, Virginia, North Carolina, and across the Southeast, the practical question is not whether these requests will arrive but whether your business is prepared to handle them correctly when they do.
The ADA applies to any private employer with 15 or more employees. It requires covered employers to provide reasonable accommodations to qualified employees with disabilities, unless doing so creates an undue hardship on the business. Those two terms — reasonable and undue hardship — do most of the legal work, and misunderstanding either one is where most employers get into trouble.
When an employee requests an accommodation, the ADA does not require them to use any specific language. An employee who tells a manager that her anxiety is making it hard to concentrate at her workstation has made a legally recognized accommodation request, even if she never mentioned the ADA. At that point, the employer’s obligation to engage in the interactive process is triggered.
The interactive process is a documented, good-faith conversation between the employer and the employee to identify an effective accommodation. The EEOC expects employers to respond promptly. Unnecessary delay in responding to an accommodation request can itself constitute a violation, separate from the underlying accommodation issue.
The process involves four practical steps:
Acknowledge the request and respond within one to two business days
Gather information about the employee's functional limitations and how they affect the job
Identify and discuss accommodation options collaboratively
Document the chosen accommodation and implement it, then follow up to confirm it is working
In February 2026, the EEOC issued guidance specifically addressing remote work as a disability accommodation. The key point: a blanket return-to-office policy does not automatically override an existing remote work accommodation. Employers must still conduct an individualized assessment and engage the interactive process before withdrawing a telework arrangement.
Accommodation claims are at record highs and three patterns consistently drive liability for employers. First, treating a job title or physical presence requirement as an automatic bar to accommodation without actually assessing whether the employee can perform essential functions remotely or with modifications. Second, failing to document the interactive process — if a claim is filed, the employer bears the burden of showing it engaged in good-faith efforts. Third, applying inconsistent standards across employees with similar requests.
Mental health conditions are subject to the same interactive process as physical disabilities. Employers cannot ask about an employee’s diagnosis. They can ask about functional limitations and what accommodation would help address them. That information must be kept confidential and stored separately from the employee’s general personnel file.For small businesses without a dedicated HR department, the accommodation process is one of the highest-risk areas of employment law precisely because it requires individualized judgment rather than a fixed policy. Fractional HR support or HR consulting partnerships give small employers access to the expertise needed to handle these situations correctly without the cost of a full-time HR team.The undue hardship defense is real but narrowly applied. Denying an accommodation based on assumed cost, without actually running that analysis, does not qualify as undue hardship.
This week, review your current process for handling accommodation requests, confirm that your managers know how to recognize an informal request, and make sure you have a documentation standard in place before the next request arrives.
