Dive Brief:
- FedEx will pay $280,000 to settle a disability discrimination complaint filed by the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, according to a consent decree filed Thursday (EEOC v. Federal Express Corp. d/b/a FedEx Express).
- According to EEOC’s January 2025 complaint, FedEx revoked telework accommodations for New York City-based dispatchers with disabilities in February 2023, despite in-office presence allegedly not being an essential function of the job.
- In addition to paying $280,000 to three affected workers, FedEx will annually train employees on the Americans with Disabilities Act, report all accommodation requests to EEOC and reinstate an aggrieved former employee who was affected by the policy, among other requirements.
Dive Insight:
The case against FedEx is an example of something many attorneys warned about as employers began to require workers to return to the office after COVID-19 cases declined: a rise in lawsuits against companies that did not sufficiently consider workers’ continued teleworking requests when instituting an RTO policy.
Telework has long been considered a reasonable accommodation for workers for disabilities; EEOC’s page on the option dates all the way back to 2003.
In the case of FedEx, the company closed an office in New Jersey and relocated dispatchers to New York in March 2020, which would have required the charging party, or primary plaintiff in the lawsuit, to travel significantly further. The worker — who has Type II diabetes, asthma, diabetic neuropathy and other conditions that limit her mobility — would have had to navigate trains and take lengthy walks.
In April, however, the company allowed all workers to work remotely due to the pandemic.
In August 2021, FedEx allegedly asked dispatchers who wanted to continue to work remotely to submit an accommodation request form and medical documentation, which several workers did.
The charging party and other workers were granted telework accommodations and successfully continued in their roles until February 2023, when dispatch managers allegedly asked the workplace committee that approved the accommodations to review them because they “needed dispatchers back in the office.” The committee ultimately denied continued telework accommodations without interviewing the affected workers or offering alternatives, allegedly citing a decline in COVID-19 cases and an “operational need for dispatchers to work at the office.”
While the worker clarified that her accommodation was not based on COVID-19 and provided doctors’ notes attesting to her difficulty in walking, the committee allegedly refused to explore other options or the operational need for in-person work.
The potential compliance perils of return-to-office mandates reared its head again last year with President Donald Trump’s “Return to In-Person Work” memorandum, in which the president required department and agency heads to order federal workers back to the office.
EEOC responded to the memo at the time, cautioning agencies not to take a “blanket approach” to telework accommodations — a term echoed by Kimberly Cruz, regional attorney for EEOC’s New York district office, in an agency release announcing the FedEx settlement.
“FedEx is committed to complying with all requirements of the Americans with Disabilities Act,” James Anderson, a communications advisor at FedEx, told HR Dive in a statement. “While we continue to deny a number of the allegations made in this lawsuit, we are pleased to have reached an agreement to resolve this case.”
