HHS OHR Policy 126-1: Reasonable Accommodation

The Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) issued a new department-wide reasonable accommodation policy, OHR Policy 126-1, establishing the HHS Reasonable Accommodation Program and superseding both the department's 2012 reasonable accommodation policy and the September 2025 policy under which the CDC had barred telework as a reasonable accommodation for employees' disabilities. Under the new policy, supervisors may decide "simple, obvious" accommodation requests on their own, but telework and reassignment are expressly designated as never simple or obvious, and every approval of telework, remote work, or reassignment — whether as a final or an interim accommodation — must be reviewed and approved by a political appointee at the Assistant Secretary level or higher.