PROBATIONER GETS FIVE YEARS BACK PAY PLUS
She wasn’t asking a lot nor for anything that other feds have not requested thousands of times. Still in her probationary period, she asked for a reasonable accommodation and backed it up with substantial medical documentation. The agency took some steps to get her to a different vacant position that fit her needs, but ultimately rejected her claiming that the job required certain physical abilities that were essential to performing successfully that the employee did not have. So, it terminated her in June 2021. All of that would have been within the agency’s legal rights except for the fact that it made up the so-called required physical demands out of thin air. It was a total fiction. When the employee’s discrimination case got to EEOC, it wrote the following:
Both the generic job description and the vacancy announcement for the Program Support Clerk position describe a sedentary clerical position. While Hiring Manager asserts, without explanation, that helping students with luggage and moving boxes is an essential function of the position, she does not provide any corroboration of her assertion, nor details as to how often such a task is required or why such tasks are not a marginal function that could be reassigned to other employees. Accordingly, we find that heavy lifting, at best is a marginal function of the Program Support Clerk position.
In other words, when agency denies a reasonable accommodation alleging the employee cannot perform some essential function and that function is not part of the position description or other long-standing documentation, the employee has a good chance of winning.
In this case, Jenna, the employee, is getting five years back pay with interest and any leave she would have earned during that time. She is also getting the right to prove the agency owes her even more money for compensatory damages. Finally, once she calculates how much extra she must pay in income taxes because she is receiving all this money ion one tax year, the agency must reimburse her for the extra tax hit.
For details, check out Jenna P., v. Brooke Rollins, Sec’y, Dep’t. of Agriculture (Forest Service), EEOC No. 2022004291 (2026)
