Can Your Employer Force You onto Medical Leave Instead of Accommodating You in New York?

Take a hypothetical. An inventory clerk at a distribution warehouse in Bohemia returns from back surgery with a doctor’s note: no lifting over 20 pounds for eight weeks. Most of the shift is scanning and counting stock. Once or twice a shift a heavy carton has to be moved, and a coworker on the same aisle moves cartons all day. Human resources answers the note in writing: come back when you have no restrictions, and until then you are on leave that counts as FMLA leave.

The clerk asked for a way to keep working and got leave nobody asked for. Below are the New York rules in the order they come up; our Long Island disability discrimination lawyer page covers the claims. This is general information, not advice about any one situation.

Leave is an accommodation, not the only one

The State Human Rights Law makes it an unlawful discriminatory practice for an employer “to refuse to provide reasonable accommodations to the known disabilities” of an employee (Executive Law § 296(3)(a)). A reasonable accommodation means “actions taken which permit” the employee “to perform in a reasonable manner the activities involved in the job,” including “job restructuring and modified work schedules,” and the Division of Human Rights’ regulation adds “reassignment to an available position.”

Leave is on the list too. Announcing its July 13, 2026 agreement with American Airlines, the Division named “time off for a medical appointment or temporary medical leave” as accommodations an employer may not deny; our post on attendance points for disability-related absences covers that agreement. The Bohemia clerk has the reverse problem: leave imposed on someone who asked to work.

The regulation sets both sides of the choice. The employer “has the right to select which reasonable accommodation will be provided, so long as it is effective in meeting the need.” The employee “has the right to refuse an accommodation despite the existence of a disability, if the employee can perform the job in a reasonable manner without the accommodation.” Unpaid weeks at home do not help a clerk with a lifting limit do the job.

The regulation also covers the carton. Duties the employee “cannot perform due to the disability, and that are not essential to the position, must not be required.” A temporary condition can qualify as well, and “available light duty” is among the accommodations the regulation lists for one. Consequently, when the only answer is leave, ask in writing why the change you asked for would not work.

The “100 percent healed” rule under federal law

For employers with 15 or more employees, the Americans with Disabilities Act counts as discrimination “not making reasonable accommodations” to the known limitations of a qualified employee, unless the employer “can demonstrate that the accommodation would impose an undue hardship.”

The EEOC’s guidance on leave says an employer violates the ADA if it requires an employee with a disability to be “100%” healed when the employee can do the job with or without reasonable accommodation, absent undue hardship. Its example is close to the Bohemia facts: a clerk released after surgery with a 20-pound lifting restriction, in a job that does not call for that lifting, is refused a return, and the employer’s action “violates the ADA.”

The EEOC also says an employer may not require an employee to accept an accommodation the employee does not want. The limit is in the federal regulation: an employee who rejects an accommodation necessary to perform the essential functions, and then cannot perform them, “will not be considered qualified.” Consequently, turning down leave is safest when your doctor’s note says you can do the core of the job with the change you asked for.

The conversation New York requires before the answer is leave

Under the State regulation, the employer “has a duty to move forward to consider accommodation once the need for accommodation is known or requested,” and must “clearly request” any documentation it needs. The employee, in turn, must make the need known and supply the medical information needed.

Courts call this the interactive process. In June 2026 the Third Department wrote that “an employer generally cannot obtain summary judgment on a discrimination claim unless the record demonstrates that it engaged in a good faith interactive process”; our post on remote work as a disability accommodation covers that case.

New York City writes the process into its law. It is a separate unlawful practice to “refuse or otherwise fail to engage in a cooperative dialogue within a reasonable time” with a person who asked for an accommodation or who the employer has notice may need one, and the dialogue must end in a written final determination. The four questions below put that analysis in order.

You gotta document better. Put the accommodation request in writing. Say what your doctor says you can do and ask for a change that lets you work. If they tell you to go out on leave instead, write a letter asking them why the change you requested would not work. Keep everything in the file, not just in someone’s memory. When the employer later says it had no choice, the dates on those documents are what matter.

What a forced FMLA designation costs you

The Bohemia leave letter also says the weeks count as FMLA leave, and that label has a cost. The Family and Medical Leave Act gives an eligible employee “a total of 12 workweeks of leave during any 12-month period.” The Department of Labor’s regulation makes the employer “responsible in all circumstances for designating leave as FMLA-qualifying” and for telling the employee how much leave it is counting. A week imposed now is a week you may not have when a flare-up or a second surgery comes.

The same regulation keeps the laws apart: an employer “must therefore provide leave under whichever statutory provision provides the greater rights to employees.” Consequently, ask in writing for the designation notice and the count of weeks, and keep both. If the leave followed a request to keep working, that notice is the employer’s own record of when it sent you home.

Public employees and Civil Service Law section 72

Civil service employees of the State and local governments have their own procedure. Under Civil Service Law § 72, an appointing authority that judges an employee unable to do the job because of a disability, other than one from an occupational injury or disease, may require a medical examination by an officer the civil service department or commission selects. If the officer certifies the employee unfit, the employee gets written notice of the proposed leave and ten working days to object and request a hearing. A timely request holds the leave “in abeyance,” and “the burden of proving mental or physical unfitness shall be upon the person alleging it.”

In Berdynaj v. City of New York, a federal judge in Manhattan denied a City employee’s motion for a preliminary injunction on August 31, 2026. According to the parties’ papers, which the court presented “as background only,” the Department of Citywide Administrative Services had approved remote work for an employee’s respiratory conditions, later denied it, and on September 12, 2025 placed him on “an unrequested and involuntary FMLA leave.” The agency also brought disciplinary charges after an investigation into international travel and work from abroad. The court found he had “not offered a coherent explanation regarding his requested accommodation of hybrid work,” and it decided only the injunction motion. The case is a warning from the employee’s side: the request has to match how the employee actually lives and works.

Retaliation after you ask

The State Human Rights Law makes it unlawful to retaliate against a person because the person “requested a reasonable accommodation” (Executive Law § 296(7)), and New York City’s law says the same. Whether a particular leave or write-up was retaliation turns on proof of the connection, which our post on the retaliation standard after 2019 explains.

And again, asking for an accommodation is protected. That’s always the big play: there’s a retaliation hook. So you told them that you need an accommodation and then they put you out on leave or docked your time or wrote you up. The Human Rights Law protects against retaliation like that because you asked for an accommodation. And if you objected to what was happening, said it was discrimination, you could look at also section 740, the whistleblower statute. An employer who is unhappy with an employee who exercises their rights can find themselves on the butt end of a lawsuit for retaliation.

Retaliation in New York is never one statute. Labor Law § 740 protects an employee who “objects to, or refuses to participate in” a practice the employee reasonably believes violates a law, and a written objection that forced leave is disability discrimination fits that language. The parties are entitled to a jury, and a court may order reinstatement or front pay, lost wages and benefits, fees, a civil penalty, and punitive damages “if the violation was willful, malicious or wanton.” Labor Law § 215 bars penalizing an employee for using “any legally protected absence,” including by “any other point, or deductions from an allotted bank of time,” with liquidated damages of up to $20,000; if the employer later counts the leave days against you, it can apply. Both sections have two-year limits, and § 215 does not reach State or municipal employees, who look to Civil Service Law § 75-b. Put any objection in writing, and date it.

Which door, and the clocks

You have got to know what laws are administrative and what laws are not administrative and could result in you getting money damages. So if you work for the government and you’re looking at a section 72 leave, it goes to a hearing if you ask for one in time. The Human Rights Law gives you two choices of doors that you can go through. You can go to the Division of Human Rights on a complaint or you can go to court and bring a lawsuit for damages. So pick the right door with your lawyer because generally if you file with the Division it will close the courthouse door on that claim.

Both doors can lead to money. The Division itself can award compensatory damages, and punitive damages against private employers (Executive Law § 297(4)(c)); the court action is “for damages,” with the same limit on punitive damages, unless the person filed with the Division. The clocks below run from the forced leave, the denial or the retaliatory act.

The clocks overlap, and the shortest one controls the first decision. Bring the paper below to the first call.

Back to the clerk in Bohemia

The clerk can do the job with one change: someone else moves the carton. The regulation says a non-essential duty the employee cannot perform “must not be required,” and the EEOC’s 20-pound example ends with the employer in violation. The clerk’s next step is a short written reply to human resources: the restriction, the duties it affects, the change requested, and a request for the reason in writing if the answer is still leave.

If a write-up or docked leave follows, that paper trail is the retaliation case; our Long Island retaliation lawyer page covers how the timing is proved.

Sources

• New York Executive Law § 292, Definitions
• New York Executive Law § 296, Unlawful discriminatory practices
• New York Executive Law § 297, Procedure
• 9 NYCRR 466.11, Reasonable accommodation by employers
• New York Civil Service Law § 72, Leave for ordinary disability
• New York Civil Service Law § 75-b, Retaliatory action by public employers
• New York Labor Law § 215, Prohibited retaliation
• New York Labor Law § 740, Retaliatory action by employers
• NYC Commission on Human Rights, text of the NYC Human Rights Law (Admin. Code § 8-107)
• 42 U.S.C. § 12111, ADA definitions
• 42 U.S.C. § 12112, ADA discrimination
• 29 C.F.R. § 1630.9, Not making reasonable accommodation
• EEOC, Employer-Provided Leave and the Americans with Disabilities Act
• EEOC, Enforcement Guidance on Reasonable Accommodation and Undue Hardship under the ADA
• NYS Division of Human Rights, agreement with American Airlines (July 13, 2026)
• Matter of Smelyansky v New York State Office of General Services, 2026 NY Slip Op 03708 (3d Dept June 11, 2026)
• Berdynaj v. City of New York, No. 26 Civ. 2126 (DEH) (S.D.N.Y. Aug. 31, 2026), opinion and order (ECF No. 61)

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Leave is one possible end of the accommodation process, not a shortcut around it. Our employment law practice handles the claims that follow.

If your employer sent you home on leave after you asked for an accommodation to keep working, call (516) 750-0595 with the doctor’s note and the leave letter in hand, or request a free case review.