I’ve watched smart HR teams walk straight into ADA litigation not because they were cruel, but because they were bureaucratic. They asked for more documentation. They waited. They asked for more documentation again. And somewhere in that pile of physician notes and forms and delays, an employee gave up or got fired—and the company paid for it.

The ADA’s interactive process was not designed to work this way. And courts are increasingly saying so.

What the Interactive Process Was Actually Supposed to Be#

The ADA’s legislative history is pretty clear on this. A 1989 Senate committee report—the document scholars trace as the conceptual origin of the interactive process—described a “problem-solving approach” centered on the employee’s experience. Employers were told to solicit accommodation suggestions from employees first, and if they needed outside help, to consult employment agencies familiar with disability needs.

Physicians aren’t mentioned. Neither is documentation.

What we have today is something different: a process that treats every accommodation request as presumptively fraudulent until a doctor says otherwise. Legal scholar Doron Dorfman coined a name for this in his 2019 article in Law & Society Review—the “disability con”—describing a deeply embedded cultural belief that people claiming disability are faking it, seeking benefits they don’t deserve. That fear has been written into accommodation procedures so thoroughly that many HR teams don’t question it.

They should.

The Documentation Trap#

Here’s where employers keep getting themselves in trouble. Medical documentation has a legitimate, limited role: confirming that a qualifying ADA disability exists and identifying the functional limitations that need addressing. That’s it.

What it’s not supposed to do is replace your judgment. EEOC Enforcement Guidance is explicit that any independent medical examination must be “limited to determining the existence of an ADA disability and the functional limitations that require reasonable accommodation.” Demanding that a physician also evaluate and endorse specific accommodations shifts an obligation that belongs to the employer—onto a doctor who has probably never set foot in your workplace.

Courts have noticed this pattern. In Reyes v. Krasdale Foods (S.D.N.Y. 2013), both parties agreed the employee had Type 1 diabetes. His doctor provided a note recommending schedule accommodation. The employer was still excused from granting a 30-minute shift change because the note didn’t specifically endorse that particular adjustment. An acknowledged disability plus a doctor’s note wasn’t enough—the documentation had to name the exact ask.

That outcome should alarm any HR professional reading it. You can have confirmation of disability, a physician recommendation, and a reasonable request, and still lose because the paperwork wasn’t specific enough.

Then there’s the delay problem. In Strife v. Aldine Independent School District (5th Cir. 2025), the employer demanded documentation addressing alternative accommodations despite already having five physician letters confirming disability and need. The Fifth Circuit held that the resulting six-month delay could constitute a failure to accommodate and evidence of bad faith—even though the accommodation was eventually granted and the employee suffered no separate injury during the delay.

Six months of paperwork shuffling. Accommodation eventually approved. Still potentially liable.

What’s Actually at Stake#

The cost argument against accommodation is mostly myth. The Job Accommodation Network, funded by the U.S. Department of Labor, has tracked accommodation costs since 2019. Their data: 49.4% of accommodations cost nothing. When there is a cost, the median is around $300. Common high-impact accommodations—noise-canceling headphones, written task lists, schedule adjustments, meeting agendas—fall between $0 and $500.

Compare that to the alternative. EEOC settlements and jury verdicts routinely land between $30,000 and $300,000+, not counting legal fees, mandatory training requirements, and reputational exposure.

Foley & Lardner documented in early 2026 that the most consistent pattern in employer trial losses was treating the interactive process as a one-time administrative hurdle rather than a sustained obligation—often because a frustrated manager decided to terminate rather than keep working through a difficult accommodation situation.

That’s the real liability source. Not the accommodation. The abandonment of the process.

A Better Approach#

Here’s what an accommodation process that actually follows EEOC guidance—and reduces legal exposure—looks like in practice.

Start with the employee, not the forms. When someone requests accommodation, the first conversation should be: “Tell me what’s getting in the way of doing your job, and what would help.” The employee knows their body and their work better than any physician who has never been in your office.

Request only what you need. If disability isn’t obvious and the connection to the requested accommodation isn’t clear, you can ask for documentation. But keep it focused. You need to know: does a qualifying disability exist, and what are the functional limitations? You don’t need full medical records. You don’t need a second opinion by default.

Don’t stop at one exchange. The interactive process continues. If the first accommodation doesn’t work, re-engage. If the employee’s situation changes, re-engage. Treating it as a box to check is how you end up in court.

Watch your timing. If someone requests accommodation and you respond by opening a performance improvement plan shortly after, courts read that sequence. The timing becomes evidence even without explicit statements. Keep these tracks separate, and document why.

Let employees suggest their own accommodations. Katherine Macfarlane’s 2021 Fordham Law Review article makes a compelling case for a “hands-off” approach modeled on how employers handle religious accommodations—where an employee’s representation of their own belief is accepted at face value. Disability, like religion, is personal and experiential. A $300 pair of noise-canceling headphones requested by an employee with ADHD doesn’t need a physician to sign off on it.

The Bigger Picture#

There’s a reason Rutgers Law professor Katie Eyer has documented that disability is “significantly underclaimed” as a civil rights status. People who need accommodations often don’t ask for them because they know what’s coming: suspicion, paperwork, delays, and the implicit message that their self-knowledge about their own body isn’t trustworthy.

That’s not just an equity problem. It’s a productivity problem. Employees working without accommodations they need are less effective, more likely to burn out, and more likely to eventually file a complaint—or leave.

The interactive process works when it’s actually collaborative. It fails when it becomes a proof-of-disability audit that treats the employee as a problem to be managed rather than a person to be supported.

The good news is that fixing this is mostly free.