“The single biggest problem in communication is the illusion that it has taken place.” George Bernard Shaw
George Bernard Shaw was not writing about employment law. But he could have been. Every year, employees across the country summon the courage to tell their employer something difficult — that a medical condition is making it harder to do the job, and that a change is needed to keep doing it well. And every year, some employers respond with a single word: “No.” No explanation. No questions. No exploration of what might actually work. Just a door, closing.
The employer walks away believing a conversation happened. It did not. What happened was a monologue — and under the Americans with Disabilities Act, and in state law such as the Connecticut Fair Employment Practices Act (CFEPA), the New York State Human Rights Law (NYSHRL), and the New York City Human Rights Law (NYCHRL), a monologue is not what the law requires.
This article asks a deceptively simple question: when is a bare denial — with nothing more — a sufficient response to a request for reasonable accommodation? The answer, grounded in the case law that governs employers in our region, is almost always no. And employers who treat “no” as a complete legal strategy are taking on far more risk than they realize.
First, What Does the Word “Process” Actually Mean?
Before we can evaluate whether an employer engaged in an adequate “interactive process,” it is worth pausing on the word doing the real work in that phrase: “process.” Dictionaries are remarkably consistent on this point, and their consistency matters.
Merriam-Webster defines a “process” as a series of actions or operations that lead toward a particular result — a progression, not a single event. Black’s Law Dictionary similarly describes a legal process as a course of proceedings adopted for enforcing a right or pursuing a remedy — again, a sequence, not a solitary act.
Notice what both definitions share: motion. A process is a series of steps unfolding over time — an exchange, an inquiry, an evolution from question to answer. A single, unexplained “no,” delivered the moment a request lands on a manager’s desk, is not a series of anything. It is the absence of process, dressed up to look like its conclusion.
The EEOC’s Definition of the ADA Interactive Process
The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission’s regulations give the dictionary definition real legal teeth. Under 29 C.F.R. § 1630.2(o), a reasonable accommodation is a modification or adjustment that allows a qualified individual with a disability to perform the essential functions of the job or to enjoy equal benefits and privileges of employment. Critically, the regulation instructs that it may be necessary for the employer to initiate an informal, interactive process with the individual in order to identify the precise limitations resulting from the disability and the potential accommodations that could overcome those limitations.
That regulatory language identifies familiar tools — modified schedules, job restructuring, equipment or device modifications, policy adjustments, interpreters, accessible facilities, and reassignment — but makes clear the list is illustrative, not exhaustive. The point of the process is not to check a box. It is to actually figure out whether, and how, the employee can keep working.
In short: the interactive process is a functional, individualized, good-faith exchange. The employee explains the limitation and the adjustment sought. The employer evaluates the actual job, asks focused follow-up questions, considers the options, and explains its decision. That is what the word “process” promises. A denial with nothing more does not deliver on that promise.
The Question: When Is a Simple Denial a Sufficient Interactive Process?
This is where employers most often go wrong — and where employees most often have a claim they do not realize they have. The short answer, drawn directly from the courts that govern Connecticut and New York workplaces, is this: usually, a simple denial is not enough. Not when the employer has notice of a disability. Not when the employee has made a request specific enough to act on. And not simply because the employer eventually intends to say no.
Federal Law: The Second Circuit Will Not Let Employers Hide Behind Process Alone — But It Will Not Let Them Ignore It Either
There is an important nuance here, and a candid article has to acknowledge it. In the Second Circuit, a breakdown in the interactive process is not, by itself, an automatic, independent basis for ADA liability. In McBride v. BIC Consumer Products Mfg. Co., 583 F.3d 92 (2d Cir. 2009), the Second Circuit held that a failure to engage in a sufficient interactive process does not itself establish an ADA violation unless the employee can also show that a reasonable accommodation was actually available and would have allowed the employee to perform the job.
Employers sometimes seize on McBride as license to skip the conversation entirely. That reading gets the case backwards. McBride does not say process is optional — it says process is consequential. A perfunctory, unexplained denial leaves the employer with no record showing that no accommodation existed. And without that record, an employee’s claim that a reasonable accommodation was available survives, because the employer never did the work to prove otherwise.
Nor does an employer have to grant an employee’s preferred accommodation if it offers a different one that actually works. In Noll v. International Business Machines Corp., 787 F.3d 89 (2d Cir. 2015), the Second Circuit held that IBM’s provision of on-demand qualified sign-language interpreters was a plainly reasonable accommodation — and because IBM had already achieved an effective accommodation, its alleged failure to separately explore the employee’s preferred captioning proposal did not create liability.
Read together, McBride and Noll stand for a coherent rule: the substance of the accommodation is what ultimately matters, but the process is how an employer proves it got the substance right. An employer that skips the process and simply denies is not protected by McBride — it is exposed by it, because it has no way to demonstrate that its conclusion was correct.
Connecticut: “Merely to Reject” Is Not Good-Faith Compliance
Connecticut’s courts have been considerably more direct. Although CFEPA does not spell out the accommodation duty in the same express statutory language as the ADA, the Connecticut Supreme Court held in Curry v. Allan S. Goodman, Inc., 286 Conn. 390 (2008), that CFEPA requires employers to provide reasonable accommodation — and that doing so requires the employer and employee to engage in an informal interactive process once the employee suggests an accommodation.
The facts in Curry are instructive precisely because they are so ordinary. The employee asked to continue working with occasional assistance on infrequent heavy lifting, requested reconsideration of the decision to terminate him, and asked the employer to explain its hardship analysis. The manager did not reconsider, did not consult anyone, did not review records, did not investigate, did not perform a hardship analysis, and did not contact the employee or his counsel for further discussion. The Connecticut Supreme Court held that a response “merely to reject” the request — with no reconsideration, investigation, analysis, or further meaningful discussion — was plainly not the dialogue the law requires.
The Connecticut Appellate Court reinforced this principle in Cooling v. City of Torrington, 221 Conn. App. 567 (2023), holding that while the employee must raise concerns and participate in the dialogue, the employer’s obligation is to make an earnest effort to discuss potential reasonable options — not to rubber-stamp a preferred outcome, but not to disappear from the conversation, either.
Curry’s most important lesson for Connecticut employers is this: a blanket policy is not a substitute for an individualized assessment. “All employees must return to full duty” and “we do not offer permanent light duty” are not legal conclusions — they are the absence of the analysis CFEPA demands. An employer need not retain someone who genuinely cannot perform the job’s essential functions, but it must actually look at the person’s restrictions, the actual work, and the feasible adjustments before it gets to say so.
New York State: An Employer May Not Arbitrarily Reject a Specific Request
New York’s highest court reached the same conclusion under the NYSHRL, which makes it unlawful to refuse a reasonable accommodation for a known disability unless the employer can show undue hardship.
In Jacobsen v. New York City Health & Hospitals Corp., 22 N.Y.3d 824 (2014), the employee requested a fit-tested respirator and a transfer to a more office-based location. The employer never meaningfully assessed the respirator request and offered only a conclusory statement that the employee could not safely work in any position. The New York Court of Appeals held that an employer may not arbitrarily reject a specifically requested accommodation without further inquiry, and that the record created a triable question about both the availability of an accommodation and the good faith of the employer’s process.
Jacobsen’s procedural holding deserves special attention: an employer seeking summary judgment on a State HRL accommodation claim ordinarily cannot get it without a record showing a good-faith process that actually assessed the employee’s needs and the reasonableness of the request. Silence and conclusions are not evidence of good faith — they are the opposite of it.
New York law does impose real limits on employees, too, and a fair article should say so. In Romanello v. Intesa Sanpaolo, S.p.A., 22 N.Y.3d 881 (2013), the Court of Appeals held that a request for indefinite leave — with no indication of when the employee could return — does not by itself state a State HRL accommodation claim.
But Romanello is not a blank check for employers to treat every leave request as automatically indefinite and therefore automatically deniable. The employer still must clarify the request, gather appropriate medical information, and distinguish a genuinely open-ended inability to work from a finite leave, a graduated return, or a scheduling adjustment that could be effective. An employer that assumes the worst without asking is engaged in speculation, not process.
New York City: The Cooperative Dialogue Is Not Optional — It Is the Law
If Connecticut and New York State courts have made denial-only responses risky, the New York City Council has made them independently unlawful. The NYCHRL is construed more broadly and more liberally than its state and federal counterparts, and it adds something the ADA and NYSHRL do not: an express, freestanding procedural mandate.
Under N.Y.C. Administrative Code § 8-107(28), an employer may not refuse or otherwise fail to engage in a cooperative dialogue within a reasonable time with an employee who requests an accommodation or whom the employer has notice may need one. At the conclusion of that dialogue, the employer must provide a written final determination identifying what was granted or denied. And critically, the statute permits an employer to conclude that no reasonable accommodation exists only after the parties have engaged — or the employer has attempted to engage — in that cooperative dialogue.
This is the clearest statutory answer to the question this article asks. In New York City, a simple denial is not a sufficient interactive process — it is, on its own, a separate and independent violation of the cooperative-dialogue mandate, regardless of whether the employer might have had a valid substantive reason to deny the underlying request. An employer can be right about the accommodation and still be liable for how it got there.
So When Can an Employer Actually Say No?
None of this means an employer must say yes to every request, or that “no” is never the correct answer. A denial can be lawful — but only after the employer has done the work the law requires. Courts have recognized that a denial may be defensible where:
- the employee cannot perform an essential function of the job even with a reasonable accommodation, and no vacant, equivalent position exists for which the employee is qualified;
- the requested accommodation would eliminate an essential function, require creating a new position, or amount to a promotion;
- the employer has genuinely evaluated undue hardship using actual facts — cost, disruption, safety, staffing — rather than assumption;
- the employer has already offered or implemented a different accommodation that is genuinely effective, even if it is not the employee’s first choice; or
- the employee has caused the breakdown by refusing to communicate, withholding reasonably necessary information, or declining to explore alternatives.
Even in those circumstances, a bare “denied” response is poor practice and, in New York City, likely unlawful on its own terms. It obscures the employer’s reasoning, undermines any later argument that the employer conducted an individualized assessment, and forfeits the written-determination and cooperative-dialogue protections the law requires.
What an Actual Interactive Process Should Look Like
Strip away the legal citations, and the courts across these four bodies of law are describing the same practical sequence — one that protects employees and, done right, protects employers too:
- Acknowledge the request promptly, and identify who at the company is handling it.
- Ask focused follow-up questions about the functional limitation, the essential job requirements it affects, and the specific adjustment sought — requesting medical documentation only where genuinely needed.
- Review the job as it is actually performed, not just as it is described on paper, to identify the true essential functions.
- Meet or confer with the employee, including the supervisor or operational decision-maker where useful.
- Evaluate the requested accommodation and any effective alternatives for feasibility, safety, cost, staffing, and undue hardship — with facts, not assumptions.
- Put the decision in writing, identifying what was approved, what alternative was offered, or the factual basis for a denial. In New York City, this written final determination is a statutory requirement following the cooperative dialogue.
- Revisit the accommodation when circumstances change — a temporary fix does not end the employer’s obligation to keep evaluating what works.
Employees carry responsibilities in this exchange as well. Communicating the limitation clearly, providing responsive and appropriately limited medical support when requested, proposing possible accommodations, and explaining promptly why an offered alternative will not work all strengthen both the process and any later claim. Under the ADA, CFEPA, and New York law alike, an employee’s own refusal to participate in good faith can shift responsibility for a breakdown back onto the employee.
Conclusion: You May Deny the Request. You May Not Deny the Conversation.
The interactive process was never meant to be satisfied by a reflexive “no.” It exists to do real, individualized problem-solving aimed at keeping a qualified employee working. Federal law in the Second Circuit ties ultimate liability to whether a feasible accommodation actually existed. Connecticut and New York courts treat a nonresponsive refusal as compelling evidence that the employer failed its accommodation obligation. And New York City goes further still, expressly prohibiting the failure to engage in timely cooperative dialogue — full stop.
George Bernard Shaw’s warning about the illusion of communication is, in the end, the whole case in a single sentence. An employer who denies a request for accommodation without a meaningful exchange has not communicated a decision. It has manufactured the appearance of one. The federal law as well as state law in Connecticut and New York was written to see through that illusion — and increasingly, so are the courts.
The rule for employers is not complicated: you may say no to an accommodation. You may not say no to the conversation.
If Your Employer Said “No” and Nothing More
If you asked your employer for a reasonable accommodation and received only a denial — no follow-up questions, no discussion of alternatives, no explanation — that response may not have satisfied the law, whether you work in Connecticut or New York. Contact Carey & Associates, P.C. to discuss your situation with an experienced employment attorney. We represent employees throughout Connecticut, New York and the nation in disability discrimination and failure-to-accommodate matters. Reach us at www.capclaw.com or call (203) 255-4150.
