Faced with a backlog of accommodation requests from employees with disabilities and medical conditions, the Labor Department plans to use artificial intelligence to triage the workload.
An internal email obtained by Government Executive states that staff at the Civil Rights Center, which processes reasonable accommodation requests, currently must “engage substantively with every request regardless of completeness or likely outcome, limiting capacity and delaying determinations.”
“The process requires case-by-case judgment, but cases vary significantly in complexity and documentation quality: some are well-supported and straightforward, some require additional documentation, and some are not well-supported by the documentation provided,” the email states.
Labor Department employees told Government Executive that the department is facing a backlog of hundreds of RA requests. Several reported waiting months or, in some cases, a year or longer for for reviews, delays they say have hampered productivity at a department charged with protecting the workplace rights of workers with disabilities.
One DOL employee told Government Executive that he submitted a reasonable accommodation request in March 2025, supported by documentation from his primary care and a mental health providers, yet his case remains pending.
“It’s just kind of ironic to me that the Labor Department is violating policies that they set,” he said. “That’s the most frustrating part, to be honest, is that they can’t even abide by their own rules.”
Labor officials wrote in the internal memo that AI will “streamline” this work, citing four AI applications under review “to improve this process.”
The memo stresses these AI tools will play a supporting role in processing reasonable accommodations, and that Civil Rights Center employees “will continue to make decisions on necessary actions (including how and what is requested).”
The department expects that AI “could triage incoming requests by likely complexity and documentation sufficiency, allowing staff to prioritize effectively.” It adds that “AI-assisted document analysis” could flag incomplete or inconsistent medical documentation earlier in the process, “reducing back-and-forth and shortening timelines.”
The memo also states that “Al-enabled communication capability could engage requestors by providing updates, prompting requestors for additional information, and initiate follow-up to keep requests progressing without staff intervention.”
DOL also wrote that “Al could assess whether the accommodation requested is effective for the documented functional limitation,” or suggest “if other equally effective options exist.”
The Labor Department did not respond to a request for comment.
Jodi Hershey, a former reasonable accommodation specialist at the Federal Emergency Management Agency and the founder of the workplace accommodation firm EASE, LLC, said “the problem DOL is trying to solve is real” – many federal agencies don’t have the staff needed to keep up with the volume of incoming accommodation requests.
“I’ve seen employees wait a year or more for a decision on something they needed on day one — sometimes going without the very accommodation that lets them do their job. So I don’t dismiss the impulse to find a faster path. The status quo is already failing disabled employees,” she said.
Hershey said AI “could genuinely help employees” navigate the reasonable accommodation process. “But that’s very different from an agency using AI to take the human judgment out of the decision, and that’s where this plan worries me,” she said.
“‘A human still makes the final call’ sounds reassuring, but if the AI has already sorted the case, flagged the documents, and suggested an answer, the human is grading the algorithm’s homework. Real oversight means a person can actually reach a different conclusion — and that the employee knows a machine was ever involved,” she said.
Michael Fallings, managing partner at Tully Rinckey PLLC, a firm specializing in federal employment law, said he’s represented clients who have waited a year or longer for their agencies to process their reasonable accommodation requests.
While agencies may be tempted to use AI to speed up the work, Fallings warned that processing confidential medical records through AI tools may raise some legal risks.
“I’m sure the government’s thought process is … ‘We may not have the number of staff to handle it,’ but that does then create privacy issues for employees when you’re not using people, you’re using technology,” Fallings said.
Hershey said she was most concerned by the Labor Department’s plans to triage requests by “likely outcome” using AI.
“The employees with the thinnest documentation are often the ones with the least access to good healthcare, or to anyone who can help them navigate the paperwork. If the system quietly moves those cases to the back of the line, you’ve built a process that works best for the people who needed the least help to begin with,” she said.
“Hundreds of stories like this“
Aliyah Levin, president of the American Federation of Government Employees Local 2391, said the Labor Department is dealing with a backlog of “almost a thousand people that haven’t been accommodated.”
Many employees, she added, were hired for fully remote positions, or only had to report to the office twice per two-week pay period. President Donald Trump’s first-day memo required most federal employees to work onsite — but exempted employees with disabilities.
“This administration came in on day one and eliminated all of our workplace flexibilities — all of them — and said, ‘No matter what, regardless of who you are, whatever deal you’ve got, however you were hired, you now have to have your butt in the seat in an office that you’ve never reported to,’” Levin said.
Levin said one bargaining unit member, an Occupational Safety and Health Administration employee with a blood-pressure condition and vertigo, was hired as a remote worker, but later was told to start reporting to the office.
Levin said the department granted the OSHA employee a remote work accommodation last month, but “there’s hundreds and hundreds of stories like this” where employees are still waiting to hear back.
“It has a disparate impact on veterans, which have varying degrees of disability. It’s affecting them the most,” she said. “We have people who, for whatever reason, they have issues driving. They rarely drive, never drive, and they live in LA. Now they have to drive to get to work.”
Levin said “productivity has plummeted, in terms of implementing the mission.” Among their duties, DOL employees carry out wage theft investigations, workplace safety enforcement, benefits administration, labor statistics, mine safety inspections and veterans’ employment programs.
Omar Algeciras, AFGE Local 2391 vice president and a wage and hour investigator, said that when DOL employees “cannot receive the accommodations they need, the public eventually feels the effects.”
“The Department of Labor enforces workplace laws across the country. Employees believe the Department should meet the same standard of fairness, accessibility, and accountability expected of every employer,” Algeciras said.
“Employees are not being protected”
Another Labor Department employee said she’s been waiting nine months for her reasonable accommodation request to be processed. She said she received an interim accommodation while her paperwork is under review, but it’s scheduled to run out soon.
“I started reaching out three or four weeks ago, before the expiration, asking for an update – asking about the interactive process being started, and none of that has happened. I haven’t gotten an update,” she said.
The Labor Department, she added, is “supposed to be protecting American workers, and their employees are not being protected.”
A third employee requested a reasonable accommodation to work from home about half of the time in August 2025. The request was granted in February 2026, but he is still waiting for an ergonomic chair and standing desk.
“I am finally seeing some progress, but I just don’t know why a basic chair took so long to get,” he said.
The third Labor Department employee said the department saw a surge in reasonable accommodation requests following the Trump administration’s return-to-office mandate, but a shrinking human resources workforce has been unable to keep up.
“They’re just so backed up because a lot of people took the Fork [in the Road]. They really haven’t filled these positions to be able to process these reasonable accommodations,” the employee said. “People need them.”
The third employee said the HR worker assigned to process his reasonable accommodation request has changed three times so far.
A fourth employee, a combat veteran, said he requested a reasonable accommodation in January to manage his depression and anxiety, but is still waiting to hear back.
“We enforce workers’ protections, but then here I am, dealing with my own dilemma,” he said.
A fifth employee, a disabled veteran who was hired to a fully remote position in 2024, said she requested a reasonable accommodation in April 2025 after being asked to report to the office full-time.
“After adjusting to remote work and the benefits of how it positively impacted my mental health, it really set me in an anxiety spiral, where I was just like’ ‘This is uncomfortable,’” she said.
The employee said the department ultimately shelved her RA request, allowing her to continue working remotely because her husband is a 100% disabled veteran. The Trump administration has exempted spouses of 100% disabled veterans from its return-to-office mandate.
That accommodation may be short-lived. The employee said she received an offer for a new Labor Department job, but was told her military spouse RTO exemption would not apply. To avoid having to relocate across the country, the employee was advised to submit a new reasonable accommodation request, but was warned there are no guarantees it will be accepted.
“They’re telling me maybe if I reapplied for a reasonable accommodation under the new job … then it might be accepted. “I have to accept the new job and then apply for the reasonable accommodation,” the employee said. “But that’s really terrifying, because I am not in a position to move. My spouse has a well-established care team and everything in place. We can’t just pick that up and move.”
