This is an opinion column. The facts below come from EEOC press releases, and every allegation is the agency’s, not a court’s finding. The argument is mine: HR departments should stop asking for a “full-duty release” and start asking for restrictions.
The request that ends the conversation
On September 24 the EEOC sued Summit Hospitality Group, which operates the Residence Inn Raleigh Downtown. According to the suit, a houseperson and laundry attendant who had worked there since 2017 was injured in a bus collision in March 2024. The hotel approved his medical leave and set a return date of July 1, 2024. As that date approached, he provided a doctor’s note asking for modified duties, including no overhead work and no lifting, pushing or pulling more than 20 pounds. The EEOC alleges that the hotel, rather than engage in an interactive process, demanded a note saying he was “released for full duty” and then fired him.
The day after, the agency sued Hunt Forest Products of Ruston, Louisiana. According to that complaint, the company required a laborer to be examined after a seizure he had in May 2023, away from work. The neurologist recommended he not drive or operate heavy machinery for six months. The EEOC says his duties did not involve those tasks, that he kept performing his job safely, and that the company fired him because of the restrictions anyway.
Different industries, different disabilities, one move. A restriction arrived and was treated as a verdict about the person, not a question about the job.
Why the full-duty release is the wrong tool
A full-duty release gives a manager a yes or no and a signature, and it feels like risk control. My position is that it is a way to avoid the accommodation conversation, and a worse safety tool than it appears.
It asks the wrong question. The useful question is not whether the person is at 100 percent. It is whether the person, with these specific limits, can perform the essential functions of this specific job. His doctor gave a precise list of limits. Comparing that list against the job’s tasks is a one-page exercise, and a demand for a clean release skips it.
It also invites the reverse error. In Hunt’s case, per the EEOC, the restriction covered driving and heavy machinery, and the job did not. A blanket rule cannot tell those two facts apart. A comparison can.
The strongest counter-argument
The best case for the full-duty release is safety. An employer that returns someone to a physical role too early is exposed if that person is hurt, and a manager cannot be expected to parse neurology. A clean release, the argument goes, protects the worker and the company at once.
I take that seriously, and I still think it fails, for two reasons. First, the law does not treat safety as a trump card. In the words of Jacqueline Barber, a senior trial attorney in the EEOC’s New Orleans Field Office: “Federal law requires employers to engage in an interactive process to determine whether an employee’s specific circumstances pose a threat that cannot be eliminated with reasonable accommodation.” A safety concern starts the analysis. It does not end it. Second, the comparison I am proposing is a safety tool. If the restriction does touch an essential task, the comparison shows it, and the record shows why the employer said no.
Michael Kirkland, director of the EEOC’s New Orleans Field Office, put the agency’s line plainly: “It’s against federal law to fire an employee because of doctor-imposed restrictions that do not affect job performance.” Whether Hunt’s restrictions affected performance is for the court to decide. That sentence describes a test, and a full-duty release never applies it.
What the process should look like
The first person to hear a request matters too. In a separate suit announced September 25, the EEOC alleges that a Las Vegas call center’s manager answered one request by saying he “didn’t do accommodations,” and that a human resources official said she was not aware of any law requiring the company to accommodate an employee’s medical condition. If that is accurate, the failure is upstream of any form: nobody in the chain knew the conversation was theirs to start.
So my proposal has three parts, none of them expensive.
- Ask for restrictions, not clearance. Change the return-to-work form so it asks what the person cannot do and for how long.
- Compare limits to tasks in writing. One page, listing the essential functions and marking which restriction touches which one, signed by HR.
- Log every request as a case with an owner and a date. A manager who hears a request should have one action available: hand it to HR the same day.
Earlier coverage here tracked a missed interactive process that cost one employer $65,000 and a temporary schedule fix that became a $60,000 EEOC suit. Run the review before the next return-to-work date arrives.
The opposite view is coherent, and I do not think its holders are careless. I think they are counting the wrong risk. A full-duty release spares the manager a hard conversation. A restriction review keeps a working employee working.
