SHRM's ADA Accommodation Failure: What Employers Can Learn Before It's Too Late

The world's largest HR organization just had an ADA accommodation case survive summary judgment. It didn't happen in a vacuum.

If you follow HR news, you know that the Society for Human Resource Management — SHRM, the organization that certifies HR professionals and publishes compliance guidance for 340,000 members worldwide — is still reeling from a December 2025 jury verdict awarding $11.5 million in a race discrimination and retaliation case brought by a former employee. A federal court upheld that verdict in April 2026. We covered it here: SHRM Race Discrimination and Retaliation Lawsuit Verdict.

Now, less than a year later, a second employment discrimination case against SHRM has survived summary judgment — this one under the Americans with Disabilities Act.

A federal judge in the Eastern District of Virginia ruled in September 2026 that a jury, not the court, will decide whether SHRM discriminated against a job candidate with Type 1 Diabetes and failed to provide a reasonable accommodation when it rescinded her offer of employment after she requested to bring her trained, certified diabetic-alert dog to the office.

Two discrimination cases. Two denials of summary judgment. One verdict and another trial looming.

If you want a refresher on how ADA accommodation obligations work before reading on, see our ADA Compliance Series.

A Job Offer, a Service Dog, and Six Weeks

A qualified candidate received a written job offer from SHRM. She had relied on her trained service dog — certified specifically to detect dangerous blood sugar changes — for nearly a decade. The dog provided earlier, more reliable alerts than her medical device, and her physician described the accommodation as medically necessary. Her prior employer had granted exactly the same request without issue.

Upon receiving the offer, she asked to bring the dog to SHRM's office when she worked there. Suddenly everything came to a screeching halt. Then, after keeping her in limbo for six weeks, SHRM rescinded the offer.

The same CHRO who approved the hire made the decision to withdraw it — and later testified in deposition that the candidate was qualified, met all criteria for the role, and that there was "no reason SHRM could not have accommodated the request."

He rescinded it anyway.

[For a closer look at how service animal accommodation requests should be handled — including what employers can and cannot ask — see our post on: Allowing Service Animals in the Workplace.

How SHRM Failed the ADA Interactive Process

The ADA requires employers to engage in a good-faith interactive process and, if an accommodation is denied, to demonstrate actual undue hardship or show that the requested accommodation was ineffective. The record in this case shows SHRM did neither.

There was no undue hardship analysis — not a partial one, not an informal one. The only hardship identified was that the request was unusual. That is not a legal defense. SHRM never used its own accommodation procedures, never provided the candidate with its standard ADA request form, and never consulted its designated accommodations lead. The treating physician's letter explicitly invited SHRM to call with questions. No one called.

While the accommodation request was still technically open, SHRM began sourcing replacement candidates. The position was reposted two days after the offer was rescinded.

The "alternatives" SHRM offered — breaks, food at the workstation, flexible leave — were available to every employee without any accommodation request. Offering a disabled employee what everyone already has is not accommodation.

SHRM’s Bizarre Defense at the EEOC

Here is where the case took a striking turn.

In its EEOC position statement, SHRM argued that the service dog was not a workplace accommodation at all. Its reasoning: the employee also used the dog at home, therefore it could not be "job-related" as a matter of law.

To be direct: this argument has no legal basis. The ADA has never required that an accommodation be used exclusively at work. Under this logic, a wheelchair isn't a workplace accommodation. Neither are hearing aids, an insulin pump, or any other assistive device that is part of a person's daily life. SHRM — which publishes ADA guidance for hundreds of thousands of HR professionals — submitted a legal theory to a federal agency that does not exist in the law.

By the time the case moved to federal court, that position had been quietly abandoned in favor of an entirely different argument. The problem is that courts treat shifting rationales as evidence of pretext — that neither explanation is the real one. It is one of the most reliable ways to hand opposing counsel a winning argument, and it is now part of this record.

SHRM's Litigation Argument — and What It Actually Implies

When the case moved to federal court, SHRM's defense shifted and centered on a single argument: the dog was not necessary for the candidate to perform the essential functions of the job.

The evidence it pointed to: occasions when she was without the dog — a grooming appointment here, an overseas trip there, a brief absence during a long meeting. The argument is essentially that because she sometimes functioned without the dog, the dog is not necessary.

Follow that logic carefully, because it leads somewhere remarkable. If the dog is not necessary to perform the job, SHRM is implicitly arguing that the risk of a hypoglycemic episode — including the loss of consciousness that preceded her getting the dog — does not constitute a meaningful barrier to job performance. In other words: being conscious, alert, and cognitively functional are not essential functions of the role.

That is a striking position for any employer to take. It is a particularly striking position for SHRM.

Beyond the logical problem, the argument misreads the ADA. The law accommodates limitations, not disabilities as abstract categories. The relevant limitation here is the risk of rapid-onset, undetected hypoglycemia — the kind that caused her to black out roughly ten times a year before the dog, that sent her to the hospital in 2017, and that required paramedic assistance at work at least six times in the years prior. A brief grooming appointment when the dog is temporarily absent is categorically different from a full in-office workday, three days a week, with no medical backup. The question is not whether she can ever function without the dog. The question is whether the workplace creates conditions where the risk becomes unacceptable — and whether the dog addresses that risk. Her physicians said it does. SHRM's own CHRO testified there was "no reason SHRM could not have accommodated the request."

SHRM's litigation theory contradicts its own decisionmaker's sworn testimony.

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What Every Employer Should Take From This

You do not need to be SHRM to make SHRM's mistakes. A few things worth internalizing:

• Document your process. If you conduct an undue hardship analysis and the answer is no, write it down, and be be thorough. An undocumented decision is nearly impossible to defend. If a requested accommodation in an undue hardship, engage with the employee or applicant in good faith to try to find a viable alternative accommodation.

• Follow your own procedures. Bypassing your established accommodation process looks like bad faith. If you have a process, use it.

• Be consistent. The position you take at the EEOC stage is the position you live with in litigation. Inconsistency becomes part of the plaintiff's case. Don’t forget, this position must be consistent with contemporaneous documentation. Your emails show something in direct contravention of your ultimate defense.

• Understand what accommodation actually means. Offering a disabled employee options that are already available to everyone is not accommodation. It's the starting point.

ADA compliance is genuinely complicated — it is intensely fact-sensitive, and there is no one-size-fits-all answer to any accommodation request. What the law asks for is not perfection. It asks for good faith: communicate openly with the employee, engage seriously with the medical documentation, explore alternatives with a genuine intent to find one that works. What the record in this case shows is not a good-faith effort that fell short. It shows an organization that had every resource to get it right — and never really tried. What makes this case remarkable is not the law — it's that the organization that teaches the law to the rest of the HR profession apparently didn't follow it internally.

The jury will have the final word on that.

This is exactly the situation a CHRO is supposed to prevent. When accommodation decisions land on someone without the experience to handle them — or get made without any process at all — the exposure is real. Our Outsourced CHRO Service puts seasoned HR leadership in your corner without the full-time cost. Contact us for details.

Frequently Asked Questions on the ADA

Is an employer required to allow a service dog in the workplace under the ADA?

Generally, yes. A request to bring a trained service dog to the workplace is considered a reasonable accommodation under the ADA. An employer can only deny it by demonstrating specific, documented undue hardship — not by asserting that the request is unusual or inconvenient.

What is the ADA interactive process and what does it require?

The ADA interactive process is a good-faith dialogue between an employer and an employee or candidate with a disability to identify a workable reasonable accommodation. It requires the employer to engage with the request, review medical documentation, ask clarifying questions, and genuinely explore alternatives — not simply reject the request and move on.

Can an employer deny an ADA accommodation because the employee sometimes functions without it?

No. The ADA accommodates specific functional limitations, not disability as a general category. The fact that an employee can sometimes manage without an accommodation does not make it unnecessary. The relevant question is whether the accommodation addresses a real limitation in the work environment.

What qualifies as undue hardship under the ADA?

Undue hardship means significant difficulty or expense, assessed through an individualized analysis of the specific accommodation's operational impact, cost, and effect on the workforce. Novelty of the request, inconvenience, or preference for a different arrangement does not meet the legal standard for undue hardship.

Can an employer rescind a job offer after an ADA accommodation request?

Rescinding a job offer after an accommodation request — and citing the request as the reason — is textbook disability discrimination under the ADA. The timing creates a strong inference of causation that an employer must be able to rebut with a legitimate, consistent, and well-documented explanation of undue hardship.

What happens if an employer's reason for denying an accommodation changes between the EEOC stage and litigation?

Shifting rationales are treated by courts as evidence of pretext — suggesting the stated reason is not the real one. Consistency between what an employer tells the EEOC and what it argues in federal court is essential to a defensible position.

What should an employer do when a physician recommends an accommodation?

Take the documentation seriously and engage with it. If the employer has questions about the medical necessity or the scope of the recommendation, it can request clarification — ideally by contacting the treating provider directly. Overriding physician documentation based on a lay reading of the employee's behavior, without any medical consultation, is very difficult to defend.

What is the difference between a service animal and an emotional support animal for ADA purposes?

A service animal under the ADA is trained to perform specific tasks directly related to a person's disability. An emotional support animal provides comfort by its presence but is not task-trained. Only service animals are covered by the ADA's workplace accommodation framework. See our full post on Allowing Service Animals in the Workplace for a detailed breakdown.

Torres v. Society for Human Resource Management, No. 1:25-cv-02360-PTG-WBP (E.D. Va.). This post is for informational purposes and does not constitute legal advice.