Engineer sues Lockheed Martin over yanked remote work accommodation

Jeffreys joined Lockheed in 2007 as a systems engineer supporting the F-22 Integrated Maintenance Information Systems program. She has scoliosis and, according to the filing, has lived with chronic pain after a failed spinal fusion and a second surgery in 2012 that did not resolve her condition. Starting in 2011, she says, a series of managers approved remote work, first part of the week, then part-time, then fully remote during the pandemic. In 2022, she claims the company even blessed her move from Fort Worth to Chicago, with her then-manager telling her that “you moving doesn’t really change anything.” Her performance reviews, by her account, stayed strong throughout. 

The trouble started, she says, when she asked to return to full-time hours in early 2024. HR, she alleges, discovered her accommodation paperwork was missing from her file and advised her to re-submit a formal request, calling it “a mere technicality.” It was not. The request was denied in October 2024, she says, on the basis that her medical records did not validate her condition, a conclusion she claims was reached by a company doctor who never spoke with her or her treating physicians. 

What followed is the part HR professionals will likely find most instructive. Jeffreys alleges Lockheed cycled through three different reasons for saying no: the records were insufficient, then her job’s “core functions” required on-site access to a closed network, then back to the records again. Her own manager, she claims, had certified on an internal form that her role “never” required on-site work. When she raised the timing, the manager allegedly told her, “I know it looks like retaliation, but it really isn’t.” 

She also claims she was questioned by staff who had no role in the medical review, denied copies of the reviewer’s notes, and that her direct team lead was never consulted about workload. 

Effective January 25, 2025, she says she was moved to 28 hours a week, a roughly 30 percent pay cut, while absorbing a departed colleague’s work. Meanwhile, she alleges four non-disabled colleagues stayed fully remote on the same program.