Ohio Bureau of Workers’ Compensation must face disability accommodation claim again

The employee began asking in 2021 to swap half his caseload with a co-worker, arguing he had been handed the more complex claims. Management saw it differently. Internal emails showed supervisors treating his complaints as a performance problem rather than an accommodation request. One claims director wrote to a colleague that his email felt like “a way to catch her in a snare with his language about him being discriminated, harassed, retaliated against, etc.” Another employee replied, “He is creating his record. Call me.”

The agency later placed him on a 14-day action plan. A supervisor’s affidavit described it as “a tool . . . to address a significant backlog of overdue cases and tasks.” The employee left work on his first required in-office day and went on extended leave.

The court found a genuine dispute over whether the agency seriously weighed the workload request or treated it as a performance problem. That was enough to send the failure-to-accommodate claim back for further proceedings.

The rest of the case went the agency’s way. The court held that his paid five-day suspension and the action plan were not adverse employment actions, because they did not change his pay, hours, or core duties. Revoking his telework arrangement did not count either, the court said, noting the agency’s policy stated that teleworking “does not affect an employee’s basic terms and conditions of employment” and could be modified at any time. His discrimination and retaliation claims failed on the same ground.

The court set out what good-faith engagement looks like, quoting earlier Ohio case law: an employer shows good faith when it meets with the worker, asks about their limitations, asks what they want, shows “some indication of considering the employee’s request,” and discusses alternatives “if the initial request was too burdensome.”