HHS scraps disability accommodations over missing paperwork. Employees say they have receipts 

The Health and Human Services Department, with a single email, is closing out accommodation requests from employees with disabilities or medical conditions. 

Several HHS employees told Government Executive that the department administratively closed out their reasonable accommodation requests over failing to provide supporting medical documentation within 20 calendar days. 

Impacted employees, however, shared evidence that they submitted their medical documentation before the deadline. One employee said she was granted an extended deadline to provide their medical records, but still had her RA request closed out. 

“To date, the Reasonable Accommodation Program (RAP) has not received the information requested to support your request for a reasonable accommodation,” HHS wrote in Sept. 21 email obtained by Government Executive. "Because this information is necessary to evaluate your request and continue the interactive process, we are unable to proceed with processing your request. Accordingly, your reasonable accommodation case will be administratively closed.” 

The email states that any interim accommodations employees had in place while their RA requests were pending “will also cease.” 

“This administrative closure is based solely on the absence of the information necessary to evaluate your request and does not constitute a denial or determination on the merits of your request for reasonable accommodation,” HHS wrote. 

An HHS spokesperson said in a statement that if a “request is verified to have been closed in error due to documentation having been received prior to the 20 day timeline, then those cases will be corrected accordingly.” 

Many employees have waited months – or about a year, in some cases – for HHS to process their reasonable accommodation requests. HHS faces a backlog of thousands of accommodation requests. 

In August, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention gave employees 20 calendar days to submit medical information supporting their accommodation requests – even if they had already done so. Employees at the National Institutes of Health said they received a similar notice. 

A CDC employee with degenerative arthritis said she first submitted her reasonable accommodation request in early 2025.  She said CDC first requested medical documentation from her in August 2026. After dealing with delays from her doctor, she said the agency granted her an extended deadline, allowing her to submit documentation by mid-September. 

Despite providing the necessary documentation, she said CDC administratively closed out her reasonable accommodation in late September. She said her condition has worsened now that she is required to report to the office full-time. 

“When we were forced to return to the office full time in February [2025], I suffered steadily worsening knee pain, until the point where the pain was so severe that I could literally not bear to walk on it,” she said. She said she condition worsened to the point that she required surgery. 

“I might have eventually had it due to my underlying condition, but I believe that it was significantly accelerated by the requirement to return to office full time,” she said. 

A second CDC employee received the same message about the agency closing out their reasonable accommodation request – even though they submitted the required medical documentation. 

“People are absolutely livid,” the second CDC employee said.

An NIH employee also said their reasonable accommodation request was administratively closed out. 

A second NIH employee said she was already working with an HHS reasonable accommodation coordinator to submit her medical documentation, when she got a separate unsigned email from the department’s Human Capital Accountability (HCA) directorate with conflicting deadlines. 

“Because I had already been given instructions and a deadline by my assigned coordinator, I was suspicious of this duplicate request,” she said. 

She said she emailed the Human Capital Accountability (HCA) directorate to clarify the situation, but did not receive a response. She said her RA coordinator told her to disregard the email she received from HCA. 

“Whether this is intentional or the result of a deeply dysfunctional process, the effect on employees is the same: people seeking disability accommodations are receiving overlapping or confusing directives, being placed under strict deadlines, and then waiting while their attempts to comply or obtain clarification go unread,” the NIH employee said. 

Yolanda Jacobs, president of AFGE Local 2883, which represents CDC headquarters employees, said the decision to close out many RA requests was “a deliberate choice to clear the backlog without taking meaningful action to support workers.” 

“What’s clear is that HHS leadership has no real solution to properly work through the backlog of thousands of unresolved accommodation requests, nor are they making any attempts to provide a solution,” Jacobs said. 

Linnet Griffiths, a former senior advisor to CDC’s chief operating officer and equal employment opportunity director at CDC and HHS, who left the agency in April 2025, said that employees who can prove they submitted medical documentation should be able to file an appeal. 

"This use to not be a problem because all documentation was submitted through the RA secure system. I’m not sure what they are using now," Griffiths said.