Can Your Employer Force You Back to the Office? What Disabled and Pregnant Employees Need to Know

Return-to-office (“RTO”) mandates have swept through corporate America and the federal government over the past two years. Many RTOs have so-called “no exception” clauses that can actually expose employers to potential liability. If you have a disability or a pregnancy-related medical condition, federal law may give you the right to an RTO exception. As recent court decisions show, judges are taking that right seriously.

Is Remote Work a "Reasonable Accommodation" Under the ADA?

It often can be. The legal landscape on this very issue has shifted meaningfully since 2020. Before the pandemic, courts generally deferred to employers who claimed in-person presence was an “essential function” of nearly any job. That deference is harder to get today, especially when an employee has already proven the job can be done remotely. For the full jurisdiction-specific breakdown of disability accommodation rights in DC, Maryland, and federally, see our Disability Discrimination overview page.

Case to Know: Smith v. District of Columbia

The Smith v. District of Columbia case was decided in August of 2025 and is a good illustration of this trend. There, a Superior Court clerk in remission from breast cancer was initially allowed to work from home because she was particularly vulnerable to Covid-19 exposure. She worked a fully remote schedule for over two years and received strong performance reviews the entire time. Eventually she was ordered to return to the office on a hybrid schedule. When this case was litigated, the court found that because “she was able to perform the job at the highest levels while working remotely for two years, a reasonable juror may conclude from that fact that the on-site elements of the job were marginal, rather than essential.” In other words: your own strong track record working remotely can be used as powerful evidence against your employer’s claim that it is essential that you be in the office.

The D.C. Circuit reached a similar employee-favorable result in Ali v. Regan (2024), involving an EPA economist with severe allergies to office irritants. There, the court held that an employer’s “take it or leave it” accommodation offer isn’t automatically reasonable — it’s a question a jury gets to decide

This isn’t just a private-sector concern. A January 2025 executive order ended remote work for most federal employees. While it explicitly exempted qualifying employees with disabilities, many federal employees with disabilities were still ordered back to work in person. A recent case illustrates how risky it is to deny telework as a blanket policy. In Panian v. Blanche (E.D. Va. 2026), two DOJ attorney-advisors with serious medical conditions (Type 1 diabetes with severe migraines and Stage IV lung cancer), had teleworked for years as a disability accommodation before their agency’s 2025 return-to-office order rescinded those arrangements. 

A federal judge granted a preliminary injunction ordering the agency to restore their telework accommodations while the case proceeds, finding that a blanket return-to-office mandate does not override an agency’s obligation to individually assess each employee’s accommodation request. It’s not a final ruling on the merits, but it’s a clear signal that courts are not treating RTO mandates as a free pass around existing accommodation obligations.

Employers Are Winning Some of These Cases Too

Courts have sided with employers where the facts cut the other way. In Kinney v. St. Mary’s Health Inc., (7th Cir. 2023), a hospital’s director of imaging services was accommodated with remote work early in the pandemic, but when the hospital brought staff back on-site with a mask requirement, she kept working remotely – having junior staff perform her in-person supervisory duties for her. The Seventh Circuit sided with the hospital finding that supervising 120 radiology employees genuinely required physical presence. The court was blunt: “having another employee perform a position’s essential function… is not a reasonable accommodation.”

The contrast with Smith is instructive. In Smith, two years of strong remote performance was evidence that the in-person duties were marginal. In Kinney, the in-person duties were supervisory and couldn’t be delegated to someone else without effectively asking a coworker to do her job for her.

The takeaway: these cases are decided on specific facts, including how essential the in-person duties genuinely are. A strong claim usually has three ingredients: 1) a real medical basis for the request, 2) medical documentation, and 3) a clear record that you asked for the accommodation and your employer either ignored you or refused to engage.

Return to Work Orders and Pregnancy Issues

Since June 2023, the Pregnant Workers Fairness Act has required covered employers to accommodate pregnancy, childbirth, and related medical conditions. For the full picture of pregnancy-related workplace protections in DC, Maryland, and federally, see our Pregnancy Discrimination practice page.

In March 2026, a Hamilton County, Ohio jury awarded $25 million (roughly $22.5 million after fault allocation) in Larkin v. Total Quality Logistics, LLC, finding that a logistics company’s refusal to let a pregnant employee work from home was a substantial factor in the premature birth and death of her newborn. The underlying conduct predated the PWFA’s effective date, so the case was litigated as a wrongful death claim rather than a PWFA claim directly, but employment lawyers have pointed to it since as the clearest real-world illustration of exactly the risk the PWFA now targets: a pregnancy accommodation request that sits unanswered, with no real evaluation of alternatives.

What To Do If Your RTO Policy Doesn't Work for You

  • Put the request in writing and connect it explicitly to a medical need. Add a doctor’s note and any other documentation you have. See our Reasonable Accommodation Process guide for the full step-by-step process.
  • Know that a flat “no exceptions” answer, with no discussion of alternatives, may present a legal problem for the employer.

Frequently Asked Questions

Not if a reasonable accommodation exists that your employer failed to consider. Firing an employee instead of engaging in the interactive process required under the ADA can itself support a discrimination or retaliation claim.

Not automatically. Remote work only has to be granted if it’s a reasonable accommodation for a genuine medical need, and only if it doesn’t eliminate a truly essential function of your job. Whether that’s the case depends heavily on your specific role.

A blanket no-exceptions policy doesn’t override your right to request an accommodation. If your employer refuses to even discuss alternatives once you’ve raised a medical need, that refusal itself can be part of a legal claim.

Bottom Line

A strict return-to-office policy isn’t necessarily illegal. What creates exposure is rigidity: a mandate with no path for the employees the ADA and PWFA are specifically designed to protect. The case law is genuinely mixed, but the pattern is consistent: employers who engage honestly with accommodation requests tend to win, and employers who don’t, increasingly don’t.

Questions About Return-to-Office Mandates?

Speak with Wilkenfeld Law Office about your situation and learn what options may be available.
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Or call 301.245.3035 · Intake@WilkenfeldLO.com

This post provides general information and is not legal advice. Contacting us does not create an attorney-client relationship. If your employer’s return-to-office policy is conflicting with a disability or pregnancy-related need, contact us for a free consultation.

Reviewed by Ari Wilkenfeld, Esq. (DC Bar No. 461063; MD Bar No. 9806240300) Ari has over 27 years of experience litigating in federal and state courts, and before the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC), the U.S. Merit Systems Protection Board (MSPB), and various arbitration panels. Ari has been recognized by Esquire Magazine as “a famously determined Civil Rights lawyer” and by the New York Post as “a high powered DC Lawyer.” Last updated: September 10, 2026

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