You Asked for an Accommodation and Your Employer Never Answered

You sent the email. You attached the note from your doctor. You asked for the schedule change, the chair, the remote days during treatment. Then nothing happened. No denial you could appeal, no meeting, no alternative offered. Just silence, while you kept working in pain or kept missing appointments.

That silence is not a gray area. California law tells your employer exactly what it owes you, and it does not include waiting you out.

Labor Law PC represents employees only, never employers, from our offices in Santa Monica and Palo Alto. We see employers violating employees’ rights at hospitals and clinics, studios and post houses, warehouses and school districts, where the schedule is the accommodation and nobody wants to own the decision.

What Is the Interactive Process Under California Law?

Under Government Code section 12940, subdivision (n), it is an unlawful employment practice for a California employer to fail to engage in a timely, good faith, interactive process with you to determine effective reasonable accommodations, in response to a request from an employee with a known disability or known medical condition.

Read the adjectives. Timely. Good faith. Interactive. Each is a way to lose.

The regulations are unusually direct. Both sides must exchange information without delay or obstruction of the process. And the employer has only two permitted responses: grant your request, or reject it after due consideration and then start a discussion about alternatives. Silence is not on that list.

The Court of Appeal has been clear that taking a few steps and stopping does not discharge the duty either. In a 2014 case brought by an employee with breast cancer, Swanson v. Morongo Unified School District, the court reversed summary judgment because the employer produced no evidence of ongoing dialogue and no explanation of why the request could not be met. The obligation is continuous once it begins.

What Do You Have to Prove in a Failure-to-Engage Claim?

This is where the law is usually stated more favorably than it is, so here is the qualification.

A failure-to-engage claim is a separate violation from a failure to accommodate. In Wysinger v. Automobile Club of Southern California, the Court of Appeal held that a jury can find for the employer on failure to accommodate and against it on failure to engage, and those verdicts are not inconsistent.

But California appellate courts are split on what you must prove to recover. The dominant line holds that you must also identify a reasonable accommodation that would have been available at the time. The Judicial Council’s own jury instruction brackets that element and notes the split is unresolved.

Practically: silence is a breach and worth pursuing, but expect to have to show what the conversation would have produced. That is a reason to preserve every version of what you asked for, not a reason to walk away.

Retaliation for Requesting an Accommodation in California

Section 12940, subdivision (m)(2) makes it unlawful to retaliate against you for requesting an accommodation, regardless of whether the request was granted.

Regardless of whether it was granted. So if you asked, and your reviews turned, or your hours were cut, or you were managed out, the lawfulness of the accommodation decision becomes beside the point. The question is what happened to you for asking. If a request was ignored and something changed afterwards, that second fact may be the stronger half of your case.

How Do You Request a Reasonable Accommodation in California?

Much less than most people think. Nothing has to be in writing and there are no magic words: the regulation imposes no writing requirement and you never have to say “accommodation.” You do not have to name the accommodation you want, because working that out is what the process is for. And in some situations you do not have to ask at all, since the duty also arises when your employer otherwise becomes aware of the need, through a third party or by observation, or when you have exhausted leave and your doctor says you still need something.

What Your Employer Cannot Do After an Accommodation Request

• Demand your diagnosis. It may ask about your functional limitations and what you need. The regulation says it may not ask about the underlying medical cause.
• Enforce a “one hundred percent healed” rule without an individualised assessment of whether you can do the job with or without accommodation.
• Force you onto leave when something less would work or require you to accept an accommodation you do not want.
• Cut you off when protected leave runs out. A finite extension can itself be a reasonable accommodation. Exhausting twelve weeks is not the end of your rights, whatever you were told.

Can Your Employer Choose the Accommodation?

It gets to choose. Your employer must consider your preference but may select any accommodation that is effective. You are not entitled to the specific one you asked for.

Your leverage is the word effective. Something that does not solve the problem is not an accommodation. If the alternative leaves you unable to do the job or attend treatment, say so in writing, and say why.

Why California may protect you when federal law does not. FEHA’s accommodation duties apply at five or more employees. The federal Americans with Disabilities Act requires fifteen. California also asks only that a condition limit a major life activity, which the regulations describe as making it difficult. Cancer is protected as a medical condition, a separate category from disability, and a record of a disability can entitle you to accommodation for its residual effects, such as time for monitoring appointments. If you are in remission and were told you no longer qualify, that is not right.

Deadlines. A complaint with the Civil Rights Department must generally be filed within three years, and a lawsuit within one year of a right-to-sue notice.

California Reasonable Accommodation FAQs

Silence Is an Answer. It Is Just Not a Lawful One.

If you asked and got nothing back, or if asking is what turned things against you, call (877) 775-2267 or contact us online for a free, confidential consultation. Bring the request, the response if there was one, and the dates. No fees unless we win.

This article is general information about California law as of September 2026 and is not legal advice about your situation. Reading it does not create an attorney-client relationship. Deadlines in employment matters are short and vary by claim.