A federal judge has refused to let SHRM, the Society for Human Resource Management, dismiss a disability discrimination lawsuit brought by a job candidate whose offer was reportedly rescinded after she asked to bring her trained medical service dog to work.
According to the docket in Torres v. Society for Human Resource Management, filed in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia, the plaintiff says she received a job offer from SHRM for a Senior Specialist role in June 2024, then had it withdrawn in July 2024 after requesting the accommodation. Her dog is trained to detect dangerous blood glucose changes linked to her Type 1 diabetes. The suit alleges violations of the Americans with Disabilities Act and the Virginia Human Rights Act. U.S. District Judge Patricia Tolliver Giles denied SHRM’s motion for summary judgment, finding a genuine dispute of material fact, which sends the case toward a jury trial.
The irony is not subtle. SHRM is the largest professional body for the HR function that is supposed to set the standard on reasonable accommodation requests, and its own hiring process is now the subject being tested in front of a jury. Whatever the eventual verdict, the case is a live reminder to every HR team handling a service-animal accommodation request that “we withdrew the offer” is not, by itself, a defensible response, and that the reasoning behind an accommodation denial needs to be documented as carefully as the job requirements themselves.
The case adds to a run of disability-accommodation litigation working through federal courts this year, including the Third Circuit’s recent narrowing of the ADA’s disability threshold and this month’s finding that internal hiring metrics are increasingly becoming trial evidence in employment discrimination cases more broadly. A trial date has not yet been set following the summary judgment ruling.
Source: CourtListener
