Labor & Employment Law Daily Wrap Up, DISCRIMINATION—DISABILITY—D.D.C.: State Department foreign affairs officer with ‘Havana Syndrome’ advances failure-to-accommodate claim, (Aug 18, 2026)

By Jason Albright, J.D.

Her condition is “most likely due to pulse[d] microwave radio frequency radiation,” and it “has plagued hundreds of U.S. officials” stationed in China and Cuba, as well as domestically.

A foreign affairs officer for the U.S. Department of State may proceed with her claim that the agency denied her a reasonable accommodation related to her “Anomalous Health Incident,” which some have referred to as “Havana Syndrome,” a federal district court found. The agency argued that it offered the officer a reassignment to another department, during which she could work from home, but she plausibly alleged that she could have been reasonably accommodated without reassignment, courts generally treat reassignment as a last resort, and although these cases typically arise in the context of an employer resisting reassignment, the last-resort rule also plays a role in protecting an employee from undesired reassignment, the court found. She failed to state a claim for retaliation and disparate treatment, however (Hogg v. Department of State, No. 25-1925 (RC) (D.D.C. Aug. 16, 2026)).

Foreign affairs officer. The plaintiff worked as a foreign affairs officer within the United States Department of State. She served there for 10 years, making her “the longest continuously serving employee” in her office. During that tenure, she “was promoted three times, received two exemplary annual performance ratings, and won awards for her continued excellent performance each year.”

“Anomalous Health Incident.” Although she would not be diagnosed for many years, in August 2016, she began suffering from an “Anomalous Health Incident,” which some have referred to as “Havana Syndrome” or an “immaculate concussion.”

“[P]ulse[d] microwave radio frequency radiation.” The foreign affairs officer alleges that, according to a 2020 government report, the condition is “most likely due to pulse[d] microwave radio frequency radiation,” and it “has plagued hundreds of American officials stationed abroad in China” and Cuba as well as officers stationed domestically. She sustained the injury while working in the District of Columbia. It caused her to experience “headaches, sleeplessness, lightheadedness, nosebleeds, and memory loss.”

Continued to work full-time, promoted. Despite her injury, she “continued to work full-time, bringing her laptop to countless emergency rooms and hospital stays to ensure her continued exemplary job performance.” For her efforts, she “received her first promotion” along the General Schedule pay scale, and she asserted that “[a]s a result” of her performance, in January 2020 “senior leadership established reasonable accommodations for [her] that allowed her to telework ‘any day, and at any time.’”

Diagnosed in May 2021. In May 2021, the employee received her diagnosis for an Anomalous Health Incident. She “immediately reported this diagnosis to a supervisor” and “requested accommodation for her disability from the State Department’s Disability and Reasonable Accommodation Division.”

Promoted again. She was then promoted again. Around this time, “senior leadership established a Remote Work Agreement... that allowed [her] to continue working full-time while receiving medical care at the Mayo Clinic in Arizona.” Under this accommodation, “[s]he continued to receive exemplary annual performance ratings in both the years 2021 and 2022.”

Arrangement began to deteriorate. This arrangement allegedly began to deteriorate in March 2023, however. On the first of the month, her supervisor, alongside a State Department “Resources Division Chief... initiated a re-evaluation of [her] current reasonable accommodations.” After this point, she alleges, the agency took 14 adverse employment actions against her related to her disability.

Contractors. The first four adverse-employment actions concerned events related to the contractors she supervised. The day after her own supervisor initiated the reevaluation, “[The supervisor] informed [her] that [she] would no longer manage her principal contractor.” Additional such incidents followed.

“Work Commitment Ideas.” A fifth incident involved “Work Commitment Ideas” emailed by her supervisor, which appeared to have been a set of performance objectives. She contended that “[t]his was the first time that [she] had not been involved in the process” of setting her performance goals “as it was supposed to be interactive.” The supervisor repeatedly canceled meetings with her during which she had hoped to discuss the plan. These cancelations, as she saw them, constituted the sixth adverse employment action.

EEOC complaint. “This conduct occurred up and until [she] filed an informal Equal Employment Opportunity... complaint.” Her complaint “requested that [[she]] be allowed to maintain the reasonable accommodation that she had due to her condition.”

Expiration of remote work agreement, flexible schedule. On May 9, 2023, a Deputy Coordinator advised her that, after her remote work agreement expired at the end of the month, she “would have to return to Washington, D.C. or go on unpaid Family Medical Leave... or Leave Without Pay.” At the time, “[She] was receiving intravenous immunoglobin... treatment every two weeks,” of which “her supervisors were aware.” The State Department also “no longer approved” her flexible work schedule. The end of her remote-work agreement and her flexible work schedule marked the seventh and eighth alleged adverse employment actions.

Ultimately extended. After some back-and-forth, the State Department ultimately relented and extended her remote-work agreement to July 31, 2023. Unassuaged, she labeled its initial denial of an extension as adverse employment action number nine.

10th and 11th adverse actions. She denounced the subsequent grant of her requested extension as adverse employment action number 10 because it was conditioned on her “giv[ing] up her initial accommodation of a flexible work schedule,” which she also argued was the case for the initial extension offer. She then asked for a further extension of her remote-work agreement beyond July 31, which the Deputy Coordinator denied, making this the 11th adverse employment action.

Reassignment? The State Department then presented her with a different option. Management offered her “reassignment” to “a ‘potential detail opportunity’ with a different department” that would “allow [her] to continue to work from home.” Here, though “the State Department saw an olive branch,” in the words of the court, she saw a 12th adverse employment action. She contended the detail would have “chang[ed] [her] job duties entirely in an effort to set her up for failure to give Defendants [ ] a feigned reason to fire [her] and have it look like it was not due to her disability.”

AWOL. She also alleged that her accumulated leave under the FMLA ended on January 5, 2024. Management, however, treated her leave “as ‘unauthorized and unscheduled absence from work’ and placed her into AWOL status.” This was adverse employment action number 13.

Return to D.C. At some point after this, the State Department advised her that her department’s “operational posture and work demands had returned to pre-COVID norms and necessitated her return to in-office work in Washington, D.C.” Management informed her “that a remote work agreement was no longer a viable option for her because it fell outside the scope of her position record, classified settings, as well as outside the jurisdiction of her official domestic duty station.”

“[Q]uite false.” She alleged that this change of tune “was quite false.” Her “position description was not created and drafted until March 2020” and stated that she could “remotely start in March 2020 and allowed her to build a new division and lead a team to do the work of a portfolio that she designed.” Her “official domestic duty station” had been changed “to Phoenix in February 2022 due to her... medical care located at the Mayo Clinic in Arizona and because Defendants would not provide... care and treatment anywhere else.”

“Top Secret” clearance not required. Nor did her position require a “Top Secret security clearance” or “any work to be done in a classified setting.” Even if classified materials were required, “there were three ‘Classified Drop’... offices in the Phoenix area which had agreed to allow [the employee] to use their stations whenever needed.” When she told her management about these drop locations she “was advised to ‘cease and desist’ her efforts to utilize” them due to “lack of funding.” She alleged “no additional funding was necessary,” however, and she further alleged that her “duties and responsibilities were able to be performed remotely and done well.” These allegedly pretextual reasons for requiring her to return to work in D.C. were the 14th alleged adverse employment action.

Fired. Finally, she alleged that she was terminated. She did not allege that this was an adverse job action, and her complaint also did not indicate when this happened or any circumstances surrounding the termination other than to say that she was “fired solely because of her disability, which has undercut her efforts to advance in her career.” She further alleged, upon information and belief, that “similarly situated employees within the State Department who are not disabled have not been subject to this type of treatment.”

Processing of complaint. After she filed her formal administrative complaint, the State Department sent her a Notice of Acceptance Letter with a list of Amended and Accepted Allegations. The letter acknowledged her claims regarding (1) the loss of “contractor oversight”; (2) the expiration of her “remote work arrangement” with “no effective accommodation” implemented to replace it; (3) “a negative Rater Progress Review Summary” on July 21, 2023; and (4) being “marked as AWOL” for a “prior pay period.” The letter also acknowledged that she alleged she had “been subject to hostile work environment harassment, characterized by but not limited to the events listed above and” the reevaluation of her accommodation and the failure to establish performance goals.

Claims denied. The agency denied all her claims on March 18, 2025. Starting with her reasonable accommodation claim, the State Department found that she could not “perform the essential functions of her position” with “the accommodation of [her] choice,” a remote-work agreement. The agency addressed her disparate-treatment and retaliation claims together and concluded that the State Department had taken the alleged adverse-job actions for legitimate, non-discriminatory reasons. It concluded that “[t]he removal of oversight of [[her] principal contractor] was based on [[her]] inability to manage her properly; the ending of [[her]] remote work agreement was due to changes in the work of the office to include the ability to work on [classified networks] thus requiring [[her] to return to D.C.; the progress review was well-supported; and the AWOL charge was the result of [[her]] failure to timely file appropriate documents requesting [family medical leave].”

Finally, the agency rejected her hostile-work-environment claim. It concluded that she had “not allege[d] sufficient facts to show that her workplace was permeated with hostile or abusive verbal or physical conduct[ ] based on her membership in a protected class.”

Lawsuit. She sued the State Department in federal district court, alleging: (1) failure to accommodate her disability; (2) disparate treatment based on her disability; and (3) retaliation for raising claims regarding her disability. The agency moved to dismiss.

Failure to accommodate. Proceeding to the claims she exhausted through agency adjudication, the court first found that she stated a failure-to-accommodate claim. The State Department argued that, after she requested an accommodation, they offered her a reassignment to another department, during which she could work from home. As the agency saw it, because she herself alleged that flexible telework would accommodate her disability, their proposed accommodation was reasonable.

Reassignment as last resort. Here, however, the court noted that she plausibly alleged that she could have been reasonably accommodated without reassignment, and courts generally treat reassignment as a last resort. “Admittedly,” the court observed, “these cases typically arise in the context of an employer resisting reassignment, as opposed to an employee resisting reassignment, as is the case here.” Extending the last-resort rule to this factual scenario, the court noted, “would create some tension with the general rule… that employers may choose which reasonable accommodation they wish to offer.” Nevertheless, Fourth Circuit precedent appeared to show that “the last-resort rule also plays a role in protecting an employee from undesired reassignment.” SeeElledge v. Lowe’s Home Centers, LLC, 979 F.3d 1004, 1014 (4th Cir. 2020).

Good for the gander. In the court’s view, where, as here, the plaintiff plausibly alleges that: (1) she could have been reasonably accommodated in her current position; and (2) the reassignment would have substantially changed her job responsibilities and her ability to meet her job expectations, she satisfied the third element of a reasonable-accommodation claim: an adequate allegation that she was denied a reasonable accommodation. Specifically, she alleged that she could have been reasonably accommodated by keeping her current flexible, remote-work schedule from Arizona, and that reassignment would have changed her “job duties entirely” and “set her up for failure.”

Disparate treatment. The employee’s disparate treatment claim failed, however, because she failed to present allegations from which the court could plausibly infer that she was singled out because of her disability. She did not allege that any of her supervisors made any discriminatory remarks regarding her disability. Nor did she allege facts from which the court could plausibly conclude that similarly situated employees were treated differently.

Retaliation. Her retaliation claim failed because she did not plausibly allege a causal inference between her protected activity and the purported retaliation. She alleged that the agency “initiated a re-evaluation of [her] current reasonable accommodations” on March 1, 2023, and that she began losing her supervisory responsibilities on March 2, 2023. But she did not file her complaint and thus engage in protected activity until April 3, 2023. And although she alleged other adverse actions occurring after she filed her complaint, “those allegations are ‘immaterial,’” said the court, “because an employer ‘proceeding along lines previously contemplated, though not yet definitively determined, is no evidence whatever of causality.’”

The case is No. 25-1925 (RC).

Judge: Contreras, R.

Attorneys: Evan Selik (McCathern) for Carey Hogg. Mason D. Bracken, U.S. Department of Justice, for Department of State.

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