Accommodation Approved, Then Revoked? You Have 45 Days to Act

Q: Can my agency rescind an accommodation it already approved?

Not without a reason the law recognizes. The agency must show, through a genuine individualized interactive process, that your condition resolved, the accommodation stopped working, an equally effective alternative exists, or current circumstances create real undue hardship. A blanket policy change like an RTO order satisfies none of those tests on its own.

Q: When does my 45-day EEO clock start?

The day you receive notice of the rescission. Under 29 CFR 1614.105, you must contact an EEO counselor within 45 calendar days of the discrete act. Waiting for the situation to improve does not pause the clock.

Q: Does each day without my accommodation restart the deadline?

Not after a formal written rescission. Under the Supreme Court's Morgan decision, a rescission is a discrete act and later days are its effects, not new violations. Two exceptions matter: a renewed request that gets a new denial starts a new 45-day window, and a request that was never formally denied but simply stalled is treated as an ongoing failure with a running clock.

Q: What happens after I contact the EEO counselor?

Informal counseling runs up to 30 days (up to 90 more if you elect mediation). If it doesn't resolve, you get a Notice of Right to File and have 15 days to file a formal complaint. The agency then has 180 days to investigate, after which you choose an EEOC hearing or a final agency decision.

Q: What can I do while the complaint is pending?

File a renewed accommodation request in writing (it forces a new interactive process and can create a fresh denial with a fresh clock), use FMLA or LWOP as a documented medical bridge, and keep every absence tied to the medical record so it can't be recast as an attendance problem. FERS disability retirement is the last-resort exit if the accommodation fight fails.

Last Updated: July 22, 2026 Reading Time: 9 min

An accommodation you fought for, documented, and won gets pulled with a one-line email: report to the office full time within a week. No new medical review, no changed job duties, no explanation. It's happening across agencies in 2026, and the single most important fact is a deadline: you have 45 calendar days from that notice to contact an EEO counselor. Miss it and the strongest challenge dies on timeliness before anyone reads the merits.

What the law actually requires before a rescission

The Rehabilitation Act doesn't make accommodations permanent, but it doesn't make them revocable at will either. Before withdrawing an approved accommodation, the agency has to run the same individualized interactive process that granted it, and land on one of four findings:

Your medical condition resolved and the accommodation is no longer needed.
The accommodation stopped being effective.
An equally effective alternative exists (the agency can substitute, not subtract).
Current, individualized circumstances create genuine undue hardship.

A government-wide policy memo is not an individualized finding. The February 11, 2026 EEOC/OPM joint FAQ said so explicitly: return-to-office directives do not override the accommodation obligation. One honest caveat: that FAQ is guidance rather than regulation, so agencies will argue about its weight, but the underlying four-test framework comes from the statute and decades of case law, not the FAQ.

If your rescission email cites nothing but the RTO policy, the agency skipped the analysis the law requires. That's your case.

The 45-day clock, and the myth that it restarts

Under 29 CFR 1614.105(a)(1), you must contact your agency's EEO counselor within 45 calendar days of the discriminatory act. For a rescission, that's the day you received notice.

Here is where good cases die: employees assume that because they're denied the accommodation every single day, the clock restarts every single day. After a formal written rescission, it doesn't. The Supreme Court's Morgan decision treats the rescission as a discrete act; every day after is an effect of that act, not a fresh violation.

Two exceptions do real work:

The renewed request. If you submit a new accommodation request and the agency denies it, that denial is a new discrete act with a new 45-day window (the Tobin line of cases). If you blew the first deadline, a renewed request in writing is the legitimate way back in.
The stall. If the agency never issued a formal denial and your request simply sits, the EEOC treats the ongoing delay as a continuing failure, and the clock runs from the last day of it. Our accommodation delay rights guide covers that scenario.

When in doubt, contact the counselor now. Timeliness arguments are the agency's cheapest defense, and contact costs you nothing.

The complaint path, start to finish

Step	Deadline	What happens
EEO counselor contact	45 days from rescission notice	Mandatory first step, informal stage begins
Informal counseling	30 days (extendable to 90 more for mediation)	Counselor attempts resolution; mediation optional
Notice of Right to File	Issued at end of counseling	Starts the next clock
Formal complaint	15 days from the Notice	Written complaint filed with the agency
Investigation	180 days (extendable 90 by agreement)	Agency compiles the record
Election	~30 days after investigation	Choose an EEOC administrative judge hearing or a Final Agency Decision
Appeal	30 days from final action	EEOC Office of Federal Operations, then federal district court

Mediation is worth attempting but not worth trusting: most rescission cases settle late or not at all, and the record you build early is what wins later. Every communication in writing, every deadline calendared.

Building the record for a telework accommodation

If your accommodation was telework and you're refiling or fighting the rescission, five things carry the evidentiary weight:

Targeted medical documentation connecting a specific functional limitation to a specific workplace barrier, not your whole medical file.
The nexus sentence: "my condition causes X limitation when I do Y in the office, and telework removes it because Z."
Your track record: years of successful telework plus clean performance appraisals rebut the "essential functions require presence" claim better than any doctor's note.
The agency's burden: to rescind, it must document an individualized basis and show the interactive process happened. Ask for that documentation in writing. Silence is evidence.
The February 2026 FAQ: it makes "in-office presence is essential" a fact question the agency must prove, not a presumption it gets for free.

Surviving the months in between

The complaint path takes a year or more. The bridge matters as much as the fight:

Renewed request first. It forces a new interactive process and potentially a new clock.
FMLA (5 U.S.C. 6382): 12 weeks of job-protected leave for a serious health condition, with FEHB intact. It runs parallel to the EEO process and does not pause it.
LWOP is discretionary but commonly granted for medical bridging, and stays creditable for FERS up to 6 months per calendar year.
Document the nexus on every absence so sick days during the fight can't be repackaged as an attendance case against you.
The last resort: FERS disability retirement, available with 18 months of creditable service when accommodation genuinely fails. Model what it would pay with the FERS Retirement Calculator before you need the number.

How widespread is this?

Honestly: the documented 2026 pattern is telework-specific. The NTEU lawsuit against IRS, Treasury, and HHS cites more than 15,000 unprocessed accommodation requests. DOJ faces litigation over alleged blanket revocations. There is no verified government-wide wave of rescissions hitting ergonomic equipment, schedule modifications, or reassignments; the EEOC's own FY2025 review found 90% of audited agencies had compliant procedures on paper. The legal framework above applies to every accommodation type. The fire, right now, is concentrated where telework meets RTO.

Frequently Asked Questions

Can my agency rescind an accommodation it already approved?

Not without an individualized reason the law recognizes: resolved condition, ineffective accommodation, an equally effective alternative, or genuine undue hardship, established through a real interactive process. A blanket RTO order alone satisfies none of those tests.

When does my 45-day EEO clock start?

The day you receive the rescission notice, under 29 CFR 1614.105. Waiting to see how things play out does not pause it.

Does each day without my accommodation restart the deadline?

Not after a formal written rescission; that's a discrete act under Morgan. A renewed request that draws a new denial starts a new window, and a request that stalls without a formal denial keeps the clock running.

What happens after I contact the EEO counselor?

Counseling runs up to 30 days (plus up to 90 in mediation), then you get a Notice of Right to File with a 15-day window for a formal complaint, then a 180-day investigation, then you choose a hearing or a final agency decision.

What can I do while the complaint is pending?

Refile the accommodation request in writing, use FMLA or LWOP as a documented medical bridge, keep absences tied to the medical record, and price the disability-retirement fallback so you're deciding with numbers rather than fear.

Reasonable Accommodation Delay Rights: When the request stalls instead of being denied
Can the Government Revoke Your Telework Accommodation?: The telework-specific revocation rules
Federal Reasonable Accommodation Rights: The full accommodation process from first request
FERS Retirement Calculator: Price the disability-retirement fallback

Sources: 29 CFR 1614.105, National Railroad Passenger Corp. v. Morgan, 536 U.S. 101 (2002), EEOC federal-sector complaint process, EEOC reasonable accommodation enforcement guidance.