The Facilities for Illness Management and Prevention is giving workers with disabilities extra flexibility to telework as an inexpensive lodging, after the Division of Well being and Human Providers rolled out a extra restrictive coverage final yr.
A CDC deputy director advised workers in an e-mail final week that, after consulting with HHS human assets personnel, “CDC has delegated authority to grant telework as an interim accommodation, when no other interim accommodation meets the needs of the employee.” Company supervisors have regained the authority to permit telework as an interim lodging. HHS management, nonetheless, should nonetheless log out on remaining lodging requests.
HHS rolled out a departmentwide affordable lodging coverage final yr that typically restricted workers from utilizing telework as an “interim accommodation,” whereas the company processed their affordable lodging requests. In response to this deputy director’s message to workers, HHS human assets management emphasised that telework will stay a final resort for workers whose medical wants can’t be met by way of various means.
“While sharing this update, HHS OHR leadership continued to stress the importance of examining alternative, non-telework accommodations as part of the interactive process,” the deputy director wrote.
In December 2025, the CDC advised workers in a memo that “all telework related to RAs will be repealed,” and that CDC management will not be allowed to approve telework as an interim lodging. The CDC memo stated workers may nonetheless request telework as an inexpensive lodging, however “until they are reviewed and approved by HHS, they must report to the worksite.”
Federal companies are required below the Rehabilitation Act to supply affordable lodging to certified workers with disabilities, so long as that lodging doesn’t end in an “undue hardship” for companies.
In response to the e-mail obtained by Federal Information Community, this new flexibility on medical telework is “effective immediately” for workers who’re ready on HHS to course of their affordable lodging request.
“If an employee has a pending reasonable accommodation request, has gone through the interactive process to discuss interim accommodations, and has a need for telework as an interim accommodation while they are waiting for a final determination on their request, they should work with their supervisor regarding next steps,” the deputy director wrote.
HHS Press Secretary Emily Hilliard stated in an announcement that “telework remains as an option for accommodating a qualified employee with a disability,” and that “each reasonable accommodation is evaluated on a case-by-case basis.”
CDC workers advised Federal Information Community that they have been cautiously optimistic concerning the easing of telework restrictions. However Yolanda Jacobs, president of the American Federation of Authorities Staff Native 2883, which represents CDC headquarters workers, stated this latest change “does not solve the underlying problem.”
“The reality is, final accommodations for telework as a reasonable accommodation are still consistently denied, and this new guidance does not suggest that improving. Additionally, due to a lack of clarity and understanding around alternative accommodations among supervisors, workers are now being pushed into accepting alternative accommodations that do not fully address their needs. This new guidance is simply not an effective solution. Workers’ needs continue to be ignored and unmet,” Jacobs stated.
HHS workers are going through longer than normal wait occasions to have their affordable lodging requests processed due to deep cuts to human assets personnel throughout the division.
In a letter final month, Jacobs wrote that the CDC has gathered lots of of equal employment alternative (EEO) complaints alleging incapacity discrimination and failure to accommodate. Jacobs estimates it should value the CDC about $200 million to deal with this surge in complaints.
Final yr, HHS repealed all present affordable lodging that included telework and issued a departmentwide coverage that prohibited an worker’s instant supervisor from granting telework as an inexpensive lodging. These selections, below the brand new coverage, can solely be made by an HHS official on the assistant secretary degree or above.
HHS restricted telework as an inexpensive lodging for disabled workers to adjust to the Trump administration’s return-to-office mandate for federal workers. However latest statements from HHS officers and the Workplace of Personnel Administration recommend the division could have gone too far.
OPM advised all companies in February that they need to not take a “blanket approach” to rescinding or denying telework lodging.
“Returning to in-person work and upholding disability rights are not mutually exclusive,” OPM Director Scott Kupor stated in a Feb. 11 press launch.
Kupor estimated in a latest weblog publish that governmentwide, about 10% of federal workers have acquired exemptions from Trump’s return-to-office orders.
Nationwide Institutes of Well being Director Jay Bhattacharya, who can be serving as CDC’s interim director till a everlasting chief is confirmed by the Senate, advised CDC workers in a March 25 city corridor that after talking with HHS management, he would push for “enhanced flexibility on telework,” particularly for affordable lodging. Bhattacharya advised workers that elevated flexibility would enable workers with disabilities to “focus on the things that you really should be more focused on, and not extraneous things.”
“We have to make sure that the reasonable accommodation requests are treated with the respect that they deserve. It’s important to me to make sure that everyone at the CDC, no matter what your functional capacities, or whatever disabilities you have, that you have the resources you need to do your work here. And so that’s the message I’ve given to folks at HHS. It’s moving at the speed of bureaucracy, but I’m trying my best,” he stated.
In a recording of the city corridor, obtained by Federal Information Community, CDC workers within the viewers clapped loudly following these remarks.
“The fact that that’s an applause line tells me so much,” Bhattacharya stated.
Final December, HHS centralized the processing of all affordable lodging requests filed by workers at its element companies. In consequence, HHS took on a backlog of about 3,000 affordable lodging requests filed by CDC workers. HHS didn’t reply to inquiries about its complete affordable lodging case backlog. However Seth Kroop, deputy director for administration, operations, communications and coverage at CDC’s Nationwide Middle for Rising and Zoonotic Infectious Ailments (NCEZID), lately advised workers that the whole HHS backlog is round 9,000 instances, and {that a} group at HHS is “trying to clear those as quickly as possible.”
“We do know that there are still 9,000 RAs across HHS, not just CDC pending — at HHS,” Kroop stated in a latest assembly with workers. “I do know anecdotally that more adjudications have been coming.”
Kroop stated HHS expects to clear the backlog inside six to 9 months. Managers will quickly obtain new coaching from HHS on affordable lodging, in addition to extra coaching on how interim affordable lodging are adjudicated and granted.
“That seemed to be the area where there was the most confusion and clarity needed,” Kroop advised workers.
HHS, he added, can be growing a telework request type that workers might want to submit, simply as they’d for sick depart or annual depart.
A CDC employee, who’s a service-disabled veteran recognized with post-traumatic stress dysfunction, lately advised Federal Information Community that the company lately rescinded his means to telework as a part of an interim affordable lodging.
The worker stated he was permitted to telework full-time lately, however Shana Weir, HHS’ assistant secretary for administration, wrote that his affordable lodging would “negatively impact the mission of the organization.” The company’s response got here as a shock to his VA psychiatrist, who really useful medical telework as a part of documentation offered on official VA letterhead.
Since reporting again to the workplace, the service-disabled CDC worker stated he has contacted the Veterans Disaster Line about twice every week on common and has been seeing his VA psychiatrist extra usually. He stated he has needed to improve his medicine, partially to handle his worsening insomnia.
Regardless of the pushback HHS is going through, the Division of Veterans Affairs is following its instance and likewise centralizing its affordable lodging request processing.
VA Secretary Doug Collins advised workers in a Feb. 4 city corridor that the VA stood up a central platform final month to course of all the division’s affordable lodging requests, “to make sure there’s a consistent standard for how we judge our consistent standard and application of RAs.”
“You won’t see one that is handled in California differently than you’ll see how one’s handled in West Virginia. They’re all going to be handled consistently,” Collins stated.
Earlier than this centralization, Collins stated the division “didn’t have clear standards” on affordable lodging.
“We just sort of let it out there and let sort of everybody individually go at it, and just assume things will be taken care of,” he stated.
VA’s Human Sources and Administration workplace and its Normal Counsel’s workplace are main the centralization of affordable lodging requests.
“You’re going to start seeing that process [go] quicker as we go forward,” Collins stated.
He added that telework is an appropriate affordable lodging for some situations, however stated some ineligible workers are additionally searching for telework or distant work.
“I get accommodation for physical needs, for physical illness. I have friends who have trouble in loud spaces. Those are accommodations we make to help them. Accommodations simply to stay at home because I don’t want to drive into work is not an accommodation,” Collins stated.
Collins stated that earlier than the second Trump administration, the VA would obtain about 9,000 affordable lodging requests. However final yr, when the Trump administration directed the federal workforce to return to the workplace full-time, the VA acquired about 31,000 affordable lodging requests. Collins stated that on the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, “most of these people were in-house and not asking for RAs.”
“This is a medically grounded reasonable accommodation that needs to be made,” he stated.
HHS beforehand granted all workers 80 hours of ad-hoc telework annually. The division lately elevated that to 240 hours of ad-hoc telework annually. If workers must telework for medical causes, they usually’ve exhausted their 240 hours of annual telework, HHS has suggested that they’ll use their annual depart, or go on unpaid depart as permitted below the Household and Medical Depart Act. Kroop stated HHS is engaged on extra steerage on how you can deal with requests for telework past these 240 hours.
Appearing NCEZID Director Chris Braden acknowledged in a latest assembly with workers that HHS went by way of main workforce cuts final yr. In April 2025, HHS despatched reduction-in-force notices to 10,000 workers. One other 10,000 workers took voluntary separations incentives or early retirement provides.
“This time of year, many of us were experiencing uncertainty in a way that we hadn’t before — sadness, confusion, anger and concern about what comes next. We lost colleagues, teammates and friends to these RIFs,” Braden stated. “We also lost programs and pieces of work that mattered deeply to this center and to public health more broadly. The impact of that moment didn’t end a year ago, is something many of us have carried with us in different ways ever since.”
In the meantime, tens of 1000’s of workers throughout the federal workforce are on observe to develop into at-will workers. The Trump administration is bringing again a rebranded model of the Schedule F coverage that was launched in President Donald Trump’s first time period. The “Schedule Policy/Career” designation would give 50,000 federal workers in policymaking roles restricted enchantment rights, making them simpler to fireplace.
Kroop advised workers that a number of hundred workers have been “tentatively identified” as falling inside Schedule Coverage/Profession, primarily based on their place descriptions.
“We were not quite sure how those positions were selected for Schedule F, but it sounds like there’s going to be an attempt to make sure that the positions that are ultimately selected make sense,” Braden stated.
If you need to contact this reporter about latest modifications within the federal authorities, please e-mail jheckman@federalnewsnetwork.com, or attain out on Sign at jheckman.29
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