What makes an accommodation "reasonable"?

Let's talk about Nguyen v. Bessent and the IRS's year-long effort to accommodate an employee with medical limitations.

Thuy-Ai Nguyen, an IT specialist at the IRS, requested multiple accommodations related to her severe depression, anxiety, and cognitive impairment. Her requests? A transfer to a different division, formal training, a part-time schedule, and the ability to work from home or transfer to a location with a shorter commute.

The IRS partially granted her requests: It offered her a new assignment with different immediate supervisors, on-the-job training, and a six-month part-time schedule. But it denied her telework request, arguing that in-person training was necessary. They also searched for positions closer to her home but found no vacancies.

Nguyen rejected the offer, arguing it wasn't a "reasonable" accommodation because her higher-level manager remained the same and she still had to commute to the same location.

The court disagreed.

The ruling reaffirmed a few key points for employers about disability accommodations and the interactive process:

1./ You get to choose among effective accommodation: The law doesn't require an employer to provide an employee’s preferred accommodation, just a reasonable one. Here, the IRS offered a viable alternative to telework: reassignment to a different team with training and schedule flexibility.

2./ No open positions = no transfer requirement: The IRS searched for vacancies that met all of Nguyen's requests but found none. The court made clear that employers aren't obligated to create new positions or transfer an employee if no suitable roles exist.

3./ In-person training can be reasonable: Nguyen argued that working remotely would have been an equally effective accommodation. But since the IRS had a standard practice of in-person training for employees learning new software, the court found it reasonable to require in-person attendance.

The takeaway? Employers should engage in the interactive process in good faith, but they don’t have to grant every request. So long as the accommodation provided allows the employee to perform their essential job duties, the employer has likely met its legal obligation.