CDC Navigates New Policies Barring Telework as a Reasonable Accommodation for an Employee's Disability

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) in the Department of Health and Human Services declared that, effective September 15, 2025, employees could no longer be granted telework approval as a reasonable accommodation for a disability, with employees on existing telework agreements required to report to their office. The CDC temporarily put the policy change on hold while it sought clarity on the department's mandates, but later revoked telework agreements previously approved for employees with disabilities. In December 2025, HHS issued a new reasonable accommodation policy requiring that all reasonable accommodation requests had to be approved by a political appointee at the assistant secretary level or higher. The new requirement created a backlog of more than 9,000 unprocessed requests and in April 2026, HHS authorized CDC to grant interim approval of telework arrangements until the department could review all requests. On June 29, 2026, the National Treasury Employees Union sued HHS, alleging the agency is still failing to process telework reasonable-accommodation requests.