Your Accommodation Request Went Nowhere: Colorado Disability Discrimination and ADA Lawyers

The request email exists, the HR acknowledgment exists, and then nothing. Silence is not automatically a violation under the ADA, and no federal statute sets a response deadline.

Save the thread, the acknowledgment, and the calendar that shows who dropped out and when. In our experience that gap is the most useful single fact in an accommodation file.

You returned with written restrictions and were told the role no longer works that way. A written job description prepared before advertising or interviewing is evidence of a job's essential functions under 42 U.S.C. § 12111(8) and 29 C.F.R. § 1630.2(n). So is the employer's judgment, which is why the version that existed before your request matters. The ADA's third prong separately reaches a person subjected to a prohibited action because of a perceived impairment, at 42 U.S.C. § 12102(3).

One limit belongs with it. The regarded-as prong supports a discrimination claim, but it does not by itself entitle anyone to a reasonable accommodation, under 42 U.S.C. § 12201(h). A reader who needs an accommodation is relying on the first or second route, not the third.

Timing is evidence, and timing alone is not a claim. An employee with a disability meets the same production standards as anyone else, and the EEOC's 2008 guidance on performance and conduct standards says so directly.

Preserve the performance record that existed before the disclosure.

The ADA analysis for a hospitalist or a staff surgeon is the same analysis as for an engineering director. The record travels differently.

An accommodation question for a credentialed clinician often routes through a medical staff office, a credentialing committee, or a peer-review process rather than through HR alone, and direct threat gets invoked more readily where patient safety is on the table. Preserve the credentialing file alongside the HR thread. We handle these with the credentialing track and the employment track running side by side.

The current EEOC regulation instructs that “disability” be construed broadly and that whether an impairment substantially limits a major life activity “should not demand extensive analysis,” at 29 C.F.R. § 1630.2(j)(1). There are three routes in, at 42 U.S.C. § 12102(1): an actual impairment that substantially limits a major life activity, a record of one, or being regarded as having one.

Coverage is not the battleground it was twenty years ago, and this is the part of the analysis we spend the least time on.

An impairment that is episodic or in remission is a disability if it would substantially limit a major life activity when active, under 42 U.S.C. § 12102(4)(D), and mitigating measures are disregarded except ordinary eyeglasses and contact lenses, at 42 U.S.C. § 12102(4)(E). The statute also reaches the operation of major bodily functions, naming the immune system, normal cell growth, digestive, neurological, and endocrine functions.

That language is what carries conditions like Crohn's and lupus; MS and diabetes are on the regulatory list besides.

Depression, anxiety, and ADHD are assessed under the same standard as any physical condition. The EEOC's regulation at 29 C.F.R. § 1630.2(j)(3)(iii) names major depressive disorder, bipolar disorder, PTSD, OCD, and schizophrenia as conditions that will in virtually all cases be substantially limiting, and anxiety disorders and ADHD are not on that list. Those two are assessed on the general standard rather than the shortcut. That is a difference in proof, not a difference in coverage.

Gestational diabetes, hyperemesis, preeclampsia, and postpartum depression are handled under the ADA rather than the Pregnant Workers Fairness Act in some situations and not in others. We sort that question early, because filing under the wrong framework wastes a clock, and sex and pregnancy discrimination in Colorado is covered separately.

You do not have to say “ADA,” and you do not have to name your diagnosis. The EEOC's 2002 enforcement guidance on reasonable accommodation states that an individual may use plain English and need not mention the ADA or the phrase “reasonable accommodation.”

The regulation at 29 C.F.R. § 1630.2(o)(3) frames the interactive process as something that “may be necessary” to identify an appropriate accommodation, and the 2002 guidance says an employer should respond expeditiously. Those are not the same as a statutory deadline, and this page will not pretend otherwise. We look at whether the employer engaged at all, and at what it did with the medical documentation once it had it.

Unnecessary delays can result in a violation of the ADA under the 2002 guidance, which also describes circumstances in which a lack of action amounts to a denial. The guidance's own example is months of inaction on a routine request after more than one ask. That passage is conditioned on facts, and no honest page turns it into a rule that eleven weeks of silence is automatically a violation.

An employer that went quiet for months has to explain the months. You are entitled to an effective accommodation rather than your preferred one, and an offer that does not work is not an answer.

“Significant difficulty or expense” is the ADA's standard, measured against the listed factors at 42 U.S.C. § 12111(10) and 29 C.F.R. § 1630.2(p). The factors reach the covered entity's overall resources, not one manager's budget line.

The Job Accommodation Network, funded by the U.S. Department of Labor, surveyed 5,406 employers between January 1, 2019 and December 31, 2024, and among the 1,425 that reported cost data it found in its September 17, 2025 update that 61 percent of accommodations cost nothing to implement, 33 percent involved a one-time expense with a median cost of $300, and 6 percent carried ongoing costs with a median annual expense of $2,400. Employer survey data is context rather than a legal standard. (the Job Accommodation Network's cost data)

Direct threat means a significant risk of substantial harm that cannot be eliminated or reduced by reasonable accommodation, and 29 C.F.R. § 1630.2(r) requires an individualized assessment weighing duration, severity, likelihood, and imminence. The statutory definition at 42 U.S.C. § 12111(3) is framed as risk to others; the regulation extends it to the individual.

We push hard on the individualized-assessment requirement whenever an employer reaches for this one.

Under 42 U.S.C. § 12112(d)(4)(A), an employer shall not require a medical examination or ask whether an employee has a disability unless the inquiry is job-related and consistent with business necessity, and the EEOC's 2000 guidance treats blanket fitness-for-duty exams of all employees as lacking that justification. When a referral arrives, keep it in writing. The stated basis for the referral, or the absence of one, is part of the record either way.

Medical information has to be kept in separate medical files and treated as a confidential medical record, under 42 U.S.C. § 12112(d)(3)(B) and (d)(4)(C), and disclosure is limited to supervisors who need to know about restrictions, first aid personnel, and government officials investigating compliance. The list is about who needs to know a restriction, not about who is curious.

Unpaid leave has to be provided as a reasonable accommodation unless the employer shows undue hardship, and a 100-percent-healed return-to-work requirement violates the ADA absent undue hardship, per the EEOC's 2016 guidance on employer-provided leave. The 2002 enforcement guidance gives the direct example: where an employee needs thirteen weeks and FMLA covers twelve, the employer cannot deny the thirteenth week without showing undue hardship.

That limit is real and it is stated in the same document: indefinite leave does not have to be provided as a reasonable accommodation.

Here is what the law leaves unsettled for a Colorado reader. Two Tenth Circuit decisions frame it, Hwang v. Kansas State University, 753 F.3d 1159 (10th Cir. 2014), and Aubrey v. Koppes, 975 F.3d 995 (10th Cir. 2020). Hwang is the circuit's most-quoted skeptical statement on long leave and it arose under the Rehabilitation Act; Aubrey is later, arose under the ADA, and lets an extended-leave and interactive-process claim reach a jury. What the reported cases do not supply is a fixed number of weeks that is reasonable and a number that is not.

Reasonable accommodation is defined to include job restructuring, part-time or modified work schedules, and reassignment to a vacant position, at 42 U.S.C. § 12111(9), and intermittent time for infusions, dialysis, or oncology appointments sits inside that definition.

“We have never done that here” is a harder sentence for an employer to hold now than it was in 2019, because most Colorado professional employers ran these jobs remotely at some point and generated a record while doing it. That is our position on the evidence. We are not aware of authority holding that a past remote period entitles anyone to remote work, and the page does not claim otherwise.

FMLA runs three separate tests: an employer with 50 or more employees, an employee with 12 months of service and 1,250 hours, and a worksite with 50 employees within 75 miles, for 12 workweeks of leave, per DOL Fact Sheet #28, revised March 2025. Colorado's FAMLI program caps a weekly benefit far below a $265,000 package, under C.R.S. § 8-13.3-505. It functions as job protection rather than income replacement at this earnings level.

The sentence that matters most sits in the EEOC's 2016 document: compliance with the FMLA does not necessarily meet an employer's obligation under the ADA.

Federal coverage begins at employers with 15 or more employees for 20 or more calendar weeks in the current or preceding calendar year, at 42 U.S.C. § 12111(5). The Colorado Anti-Discrimination Act defines “employer” with no numerical threshold at all, at C.R.S. § 24-34-401(3), so a 9-person startup sits outside the ADA and inside CADA.

Colorado also imports the federal definition of disability in the definitional subsection of C.R.S. § 24-34-301, so coverage is one question, not two.

This is the strongest Colorado-specific point on the page. Under C.R.S. § 24-34-402(1)(a)(II) as amended by the POWR Act, the employer's disability defense requires two things at once: that no reasonable accommodation exists that would allow the individual to satisfy the essential functions of the job, and that the disability in fact disqualifies the individual from the job.

Two elements, conjunctive. The federal statute frames the same territory through “qualified individual” plus undue hardship, and Colorado's version asks the employer for more.

POWR itself is SB 23-172, signed June 6, 2023 and effective August 7, 2023, and it changed no damages cap, no remedy, and no filing deadline. Pages telling Colorado readers that the state abolished its damages caps are describing a bill that does not exist.

As a deferral state, Colorado runs a 300-day federal window rather than 180 where proceedings are instituted with a state or local agency, under 42 U.S.C. § 2000e-5(e)(1), and the state's own statute independently requires a charge within 300 days under C.R.S. § 24-34-403, a window that traces to HB 22-1367, effective August 10, 2022.

Colorado's window was six months before August 10, 2022, and the older figure is still circulating in secondary sources. The current rule is 300 days.

That standard is demanding, and a difficult or humiliating return to work does not meet it. The Supreme Court addressed when the limitations clock starts on a constructive-discharge claim in Green v. Brennan, 578 U.S. 547 (2016), a case that came out of the Tenth Circuit.

We do not tell people to quit.

The window runs from the date the discriminatory or unfair employment practice occurred, under C.R.S. § 24-34-403 and 42 U.S.C. § 2000e-5(e)(1). “The day I finally understood what was happening” is rarely that date. Discrete acts each carry their own limitations period under National Railroad Passenger Corp. v. Morgan, 536 U.S. 101 (2002), so a denial, a demotion, and a termination are three dates rather than one.

When the clock starts on a failure-to-accommodate claim depends on the facts. We are not aware of a Tenth Circuit decision squarely resolving whether the failure is a discrete act or something that continues, and the question is unsettled. That gap is real and we are not going to paper over it with a citation that does not exist.

Do not assume you have time.

After a right-to-sue notice issues, a civil action has to be brought within ninety days under 42 U.S.C. § 2000e-5(f)(1), and that one ends more claims than the 300-day rule does. Plan documents, equity exercise windows, and internal appeal deadlines all run on their own schedules.

The most expensive decision available to a reader in this situation is waiting one more quarter to see whether the situation resolves itself, while evidence goes stale and the 300 days keeps running. That is the wrong response to eleven weeks of silence.

The deadline printed on that signature page is almost certainly the shortest clock in this picture, and the release in the packet will ordinarily cover the claim this page describes. A general release reaching “all claims arising on or before the date you sign” reaches the accommodation denial, the PIP, and the re-org.

Severance agreement review in Colorado is covered separately, and we review the document on the timeline you were given rather than after the window closes.

Sometimes, and not automatically. Under the EEOC's 2002 enforcement guidance an employer should respond expeditiously, and unnecessary delays can result in a violation of the ADA. The guidance's own example is months of inaction on a routine request after more than one ask. No federal statute sets a numerical response deadline, so we look at what happened to your role in the meantime.

No to both. The 2002 guidance states that an individual may use plain English to request an accommodation and need not mention the ADA or the phrase “reasonable accommodation.” An employer may seek documentation of the impairment and the functional limitation where the need for accommodation is not obvious, which is different from an entitlement to your full medical history.

Exhausting FMLA does not end the analysis. The EEOC's 2016 leave document states that compliance with the FMLA does not necessarily satisfy an employer's ADA obligations, and that additional leave beyond what FMLA permits is not by itself an undue hardship. Indefinite leave still does not have to be provided, and the Tenth Circuit's treatment of long-leave requests runs in both directions across Hwang and Aubrey.

You are entitled to an effective accommodation rather than your preferred one, and the individual's preference should be given primary consideration. The guidance also gives the employer the ultimate discretion to choose between effective accommodations. What matters is whether what was offered addresses the limitation, and an offer that does not work is not a defense.

Conditions like depression, anxiety, and ADHD can qualify, and they are assessed under the same standard as physical conditions. The EEOC's regulation at 29 C.F.R. § 1630.2(j)(3)(iii) names major depressive disorder, bipolar disorder, PTSD, OCD, and schizophrenia as substantially limiting in virtually all cases, and anxiety disorders and ADHD are not on that list. Those two are proven on the general standard rather than the regulatory shortcut.