Labor & Employment Law Daily Wrap Up, DISCRIMINATION—DISABILITY—E.D. Mich.: Employee’s failure-to-accommodate claim dismissed where she failed to explain need for remote work, (Mar 11, 2025)

By Tulay Turan, J.D.

Her therapist did not provide an explanation of why her anxiety hindered her ability to work in person.

Granting an employer’s motion for summary judgment on an employee’s ADA failure-to-accommodate claim, a federal district court in Michigan found the employee abandoned the interactive process in seeking an accommodation to work remotely. The company and the employee corresponded for months regarding her requested accommodation, but after her initial request was deemed insufficient, she refused to submit an updated accommodation packet and never provided an explanation for why her disability required her to work from home (Green v. Rocket Mortgage LLC, No. 2:23-cv-11005 (E.D. Mich. Mar. 7, 2025)).

The employee began working for Rocket Mortgage in 2012. Her position required her to work full-time from Rocket’s office. Starting in March 2020, Rocket required employees to work remotely because of the COVD-19 pandemic. In the fall of 2021, Rocket began calling its employees back into the office, requiring at least two in-person days per week. Around that time, the employee began seeking accommodations for her physical and mental impairments, which included anxiety, depression, chronic back pain, and sciatica pain.

Requests for accommodation. From August 2021 until July 2022, the employee submitted accommodation requests. She first provided Rocket’s HR representative with a note from her physician stating she should limit her work hours to five hours a day, but the note made no reference to remote work and did not explain the reason for the accommodation. The HR representative authorized a temporary reduction to five hours per day until mid-September, stating the company would need additional documentation if the accommodation needed to be extended past then.

After the employee submitted another request—this time asking for remote work—the HR representative asked her to have her doctor fill out an ADA packet. The doctor filled out his portion, recommending only reduced hours. She filled out her portion asking for both reduced hours and remote work. Later, she submitted a note from another doctor that stated she needed to work reduced hours from home but did not explain why. Rocket denied the remote work request and requested more information.

Note from therapist. In October 2021, the employee again requested to work remotely and sent a letter from her therapist recommending she work remotely due to anxiety and depression. Rocket explained it was not granting work-from-home requests based solely on a doctor’s note and reiterated it needed “an explanation of how your disability affects your ability to come into the office.” She never responded and instead returned to work in person.

No updated documentation. Four months later, the employee again reached out to the HR representative stating that, under her therapist’s recommendation, she would be working remotely because she was unable to work in the office due to a mental health condition. The HR representative responded that the employee needed to submit an updated accommodation packet and “go through the accommodation process” before Rocket could proceed with the remote work request. The employee submitted the same packet, but Rocket told her again it needed updated documentation.

After a month of hearing nothing from the employee, the HR representative sent a letter claiming the employee refused to participate in the process but giving her one last chance to submit a proper packet by June 29, 2022. In response, the employee sent an email claiming the documents she had already provided were enough and asking if her request had been denied. The HR representative responded that she still had not provided enough information for her request to be considered.

Discharge, lawsuit. In July 2022, Rocket fired the employee due to her failure to provide requested documentation regarding her request to work remotely. Thereafter, she sued Rocket, alleging that by making her return to work in person, it failed to accommodate her disability and discriminated against her in violation of the ADA. Rocket filed this motion for summary judgment. The employee voluntarily dismissed the disability discrimination claim, proceeding only with the failure-to-accommodate claim.

Interactive process. Granting Rocket’s motion for summary judgment, the court found the employee abandoned the interactive process to determine her limitations and find a reasonable accommodation. When she made her third request in April 2022, she again asked to work remotely but refused to submit a new accommodation packet from her doctor. The previous packet, which did not recommend working from home, expired by its own terms in March 2022. However, the employee still insisted on resubmitting it and refused to complete a new one.

In addition, despite the employee’s refusals, Rocket was still participating in the interactive process. The HR representative told her she would review the new request, but the chances of approval were low considering she had not provided any new information, and her prior request had been deemed insufficient. Nonetheless, the employee still refused to complete a new packet. Thus, the employee caused the breakdown of the process at that point.

Sufficiency of documentation. The employee argued that Rocket “cannot escape liability” on the theory that she abandoned the interactive process because it had all the information it needed to grant an accommodation. The court disagreed, finding she did not provide enough information to Rocket to allow consideration of her requested accommodation.

Over a span of more than 10 months with three major periods of back-and-forth, she only provided five documents in support of her request for remote work. Of the five documents, only three recommended remote work and only two tied the recommendation to a diagnosis (anxiety and depression). Yet even in those two notes, the employee’s therapist never provided an explanation of why her anxiety and depression hindered her ability to work in person and how working from home would enable her to perform the essential functions of her position. In fact, only one health provider gave any explanation of her impairments and how they affected her work. Notably, that provider did not suggest she be allowed to work remotely, despite the employee requesting such an accommodation on her own portion of her ADA packet.

The employee’s “cursory and conflicting documentation – five notes from three providers referencing different, if any, diagnoses and recommending two different accommodations – left Rocket with more questions than answers,” the court wrote. Thus, no jury could find it was unreasonable for Rocket to request more information from her before granting a remote work accommodation.

By refusing to submit the required updated accommodation packet, and by never providing an explanation for why her disability required her to work from home, the employee abandoned the interactive process. Because of her abandonment, the court found Rocket may not be held liable for failing to accommodate her disability. Thus, it granted Rocket’s motion for summary judgment and dismissed her accommodation claim.

The case is No. 2:23-cv-11005.

Judge: DeClercq, S.

Attorneys: Eric Stempien (Stempien Law) for Shavonne Green. Ashleigh Draft (Varnum) for Rocket Mortgage, LLC.

Companies: Rocket Mortgage, LLC

Cases: Discrimination DisabilityDiscrimination MichiganNews