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Reasonable Accommodation

A change to a job, workplace or housing rule that lets a person with a disability participate equally - required unless it imposes undue hardship.

Informational only - this is not legal advice. These definitions explain general legal vocabulary in plain English. They are not advice about your situation, reading them creates no attorney-client relationship, and the law differs from state to state and changes over time. For advice you can rely on, speak to a lawyer licensed in your state.

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What it means

A reasonable accommodation is an adjustment to the usual way things are done so that a person with a disability can do a job, or use and enjoy a home, on equal terms. In employment that can mean modified equipment, an adjusted schedule, leave, or reassignment to a vacant position; in housing it can mean a change to a rule, such as permitting an assistance animal where a no-pets policy otherwise applies.

The obligation is not unlimited. An employer need not provide an accommodation that would impose undue hardship - significant difficulty or expense judged against the employer's actual resources - and need not eliminate an essential function of the job, lower a performance standard, or grant the specific accommodation requested if an effective alternative exists.

Process matters more than most people expect. The law contemplates an interactive dialogue between the parties to identify what would work, and a request does not have to use any magic words to trigger it. Employers who never engage with a request, and employees who never make the limitation known, are the two most common ways this goes wrong.

Where this comes from

In employment the Americans with Disabilities Act defines reasonable accommodation at 42 U.S.C. § 12111(9) and undue hardship at § 12111(10). Housing is covered by the Fair Housing Act, and Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act applies to recipients of federal funds. State and local laws frequently cover smaller employers or define disability more broadly than federal law, and the more protective rule applies.

When people hire a lawyer for this

Advice is worth getting when a request has been refused without discussion, when medical information is being demanded beyond what the situation calls for, or when a request is followed by discipline or termination. Deadlines here are unusually short and unforgiving: administrative charges under the federal employment statutes must generally be filed with an agency before a lawsuit, and those windows are measured in months.

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Related terms

Other entries in the same area of law, each written from the same primary sources.

ADA Public Accommodations (Title III)The part of the Americans with Disabilities Act that applies to businesses open to the public - shops, restaurants, hotels, clinics, theatres, and in many courts their websites - requiring access, policy changes and communication aids, with the cost limits that shape what can be demanded.
Disparate ImpactDiscrimination without a discriminatory intent - a neutral rule, test or practice that falls much harder on a protected group and cannot be justified by business necessity - and the statutes under which that theory is and is not available.
Excessive ForceThe constitutional limit on how much force police may use in a stop, an arrest or a search - judged by what a reasonable officer would have done in the moment, and the reason body-camera footage decides more of these cases than testimony does.
False Arrest and Malicious ProsecutionThe claims available to a person detained without probable cause or prosecuted without it - the state torts, their constitutional counterparts, and the favourable-termination rule that decides when a malicious-prosecution claim can be brought at all.
Filing a Discrimination Charge (EEOC)The administrative step that must come before almost any federal employment-discrimination lawsuit - a charge filed with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission or a state agency within a short statutory window, followed by a right-to-sue letter that starts the next clock.
Housing Discrimination (Fair Housing Act)The federal law making it unlawful to refuse housing, or set different terms, because of who someone is.
Prisoners' Rights and the Prison Litigation Reform ActThe constitutional protections that survive incarceration - against cruel and unusual conditions, deliberate indifference to medical needs, and punishment without process - and the federal statute that makes a prisoner exhaust the prison's own grievance system before any of them can be enforced in court.
Religious Freedom (RFRA and RLUIPA)The federal statutes that require government to justify any substantial burden on religious exercise by a compelling interest pursued in the least restrictive way - stronger than the constitutional rule, and the basis of most modern religious-liberty claims by prisoners, congregations and employers.
Retaliation for Protected ActivityThe separate legal wrong of punishing a person for complaining about discrimination, reporting a violation, taking protected leave or helping in an investigation - a claim that often succeeds where the underlying complaint would not.
Section 1983 Civil Rights ClaimThe federal statute allowing someone to sue a state or local official personally for violating their constitutional rights.

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Part of the LawyerLand plain-English legal glossary. Definitions are written from primary sources - statutes and court rules - and each entry states the authority it rests on, or says plainly when the doctrine is state law with no national rule.

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