Slow Your Roll with Accommodation Requests: SHRM In Hot Water Again

Quick summary: SHRM — the group HR professionals claiming to be experts — is now being sued after allegedly pulling a job offer over an employee’s request to bring a service dog to work. The case is heading to trial. Whatever the outcome, it’s a wake-up call for how HR teams handle accommodation requests.
What Happened:

• A candidate asked to bring her trained service dog to work. The dog alerts her before dangerous blood sugar swings caused by Type 1 diabetes.
• She says the job offer was pulled after she made the request.
• SHRM says that’s not what happened — it says it requested medical documentation, talked to her doctors, and offered several alternatives (glucose monitor accommodations, extra breaks, food/drink access, flexible leave).
• A judge has ruled there’s enough of a dispute here that it should go to trial rather than be decided on paper.

The takeaway: Both sides describe some kind of back-and-forth happening. What’s in question is whether it was handled well enough, fast enough, and fairly enough. That’s the exact gray zone most HR teams live in every day.

The Real Lesson for HR Teams

When an employee brings you an accommodation request — a service animal, a modified schedule, equipment, remote work — the instinct is to size it up fast: Is this legit? Is this reasonable? Can we say no?

• Slow that instinct down. The order of operations matters more than the answer:
• Start a real conversation with the employee before deciding anything
• Ask what they actually need to do their job — not just what they’re requesting
• Get the right documentation, but don’t over-ask or stall
• Loop in the right people early (manager, HR leadership, legal counsel if needed)
• Look at alternatives together, not just the employee’s first ask or your first instinct
• Document what was discussed and offered along the way

You Can Still Say No — Just Not First
Not every request has to be granted as-is. It’s fair to push back if something creates real safety issues, disrupts the workplace, or just isn’t workable. The problem isn’t saying no — it’s saying no before you’ve actually had the conversation.
Bottom Line
If an organization built around HR best practices can end up here, any employer can. The fix isn’t complicated: talk first, decide second, document as you go. If you want a second set of eyes on how your team handles accommodation requests before one turns into a bigger problem, that’s exactly the kind of thing we help with. Contact us for a conversation about all the ways we can help your organization.