Professor Arlene Kanter, director of the Disability Law and Policy Program, spoke with Bloomberg Law for their article “Covid’s Remote Work Experience is Slowly Changing Disability Law.”
Federal judges are somewhat less likely to side with employers that deny requests for telework as a disability accommodation after the Covid-19 pandemic sparked a remote work revolution.
Employers prevailed in nearly 60% of federal court rulings over the past two years on whether they could reject employees’ disability-related remote work requests, according to a Bloomberg Law review of cases.
That’s a drop from employers’ 70% win rate in a previous Bloomberg Law analysis of cases in a two-year pre-pandemic period spanning from February 2017 to February 2019.
In the article, Kanter says “The Covid experience has taught people to question whether in-person attendance is essential.”