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The Employer Handbook Blog
Can an Employee Sue for Failure to Accommodate a Disability She Said She Didn’t Have?
An employee who says “I’m not disabled” can’t turn around and sue for failure to accommodate a disability. The Sixth Circuit just confirmed that’s true even when the employer is the one who raised the disability question in the first place.
TL;DR: An employee with a history of transient ischemic attacks was placed on administrative leave and directed to undergo an independent medical exam. Rather than request an accommodation, she disputed the exam results and submitted a doctor’s note clearing her for full duty. The Sixth Circuit affirmed summary judgment for the employer, holding that an employee who declines to request an accommodation and opts out of the interactive process cannot sue for failure to accommodate under the Rehabilitation Act.
Thirty Years In, Then a Sudden Complication
The employee had worked for a public employer for over thirty years when her supervisor began describing her behavior as increasingly disruptive and aggressive. In June 2023, the employer placed her on paid administrative leave and required her to undergo an independent medical exam before returning to work.
The examining psychologist concluded she could not perform her full job duties and recommended modified work activity and further neurological testing. The employer met with the employee and her union representative and laid out her options: disability leave, FMLA leave, an ADA accommodation, or a challenge to the exam with her own doctor’s opinion.
She chose to challenge the exam. Her nurse practitioner submitted a note clearing her for full duty with no restrictions. The employer rejected it as insufficient and asked for a physician’s opinion that specifically addressed the independent exam. She eventually obtained one, was cleared, and returned to full duty on November 6, 2023. She then sued for failure to accommodate and failure to engage in the interactive process under the Rehabilitation Act. The district court granted summary judgment to the employer, and the Sixth Circuit affirmed.
The Trap the Employee Set for Herself
The court’s analysis cuts both ways depending on how the claim is framed, and the employee loses under either theory.
If she had an actual disability, she never requested an accommodation for it. The employer offered her that option directly, in a meeting, with her union representative present. She declined and instead contested the finding that she was impaired at all. A doctor’s note saying she needed no accommodation is not a request for accommodation. By disputing the exam and asserting she was fully capable, she opted out of the interactive process herself.
If the claim is that the employer wrongly regarded her as disabled when she was not, that theory fails too. An employer cannot be required to accommodate a disability the employee doesn’t have. The Sixth Circuit has held that a “regarded as” claim doesn’t trigger the accommodation obligation, and this case falls squarely within that precedent.
The court granted summary judgment to the employer on all counts.
What Employers Can Learn From How This One Played Out
Documentation of the options meeting was decisive here.
The employer met with the employee and her union representative and laid out four distinct paths forward. That record made it nearly impossible for the employee to claim she was never offered the chance to request an accommodation. When an employee’s fitness for duty is in question, the conversation about next steps deserves the same documentation discipline as the medical findings themselves.
The interactive process obligation runs both ways, but employees can abandon it.
Employers often worry about their own obligations in the interactive process, and rightly so. What this case illustrates is that an employee who actively disputes a disability finding and submits documentation asserting she needs no accommodation has effectively walked away from the process. That abandonment, when documented, can defeat a failure-to-accommodate claim.
An independent medical exam is only as useful as the process around it.
The employer here didn’t just order an IME and act on it unilaterally. It shared the results, explained the options, and gave the employee a meaningful opportunity to respond. That procedural care is what gave the employer’s position credibility when the litigation question became whether it had met its obligations.
“Regarded as” disability claims don’t carry accommodation rights.
If an employee alleges only that her employer regarded her as disabled, there is no duty to accommodate. An employee who spends the administrative process insisting she needs no accommodation and then pivots to a failure-to-accommodate theory in litigation is arguing against her own record. That dynamic cuts both ways — an employer facing a “regarded as” claim should recognize early that the accommodation analysis may be off the table entirely.
Employees who dispute their own disability status during the process don’t get to resurrect an accommodation claim in litigation. Courts will hold them to the position they took when it counted.