In Kocher v. The Mount Sinai Hosp., No. 153955/2022, 2025 WL 3755782 (N.Y. Sup. Ct. Dec. 22, 2025), the court, inter alia, denied the parties’ motions for summary judgment on plaintiff’s disability discrimination claims asserted under the New York State and City Human Rights Laws.
At issue, in sum, was whether a remote/virtual work arrangement was a “reasonable accommodation.”
The court summarized the facts as follows:
On January 22, 2020, Plaintiff fell into a coma and spent approximately six weeks in a hospital, which “he became disabled from diabetes and cirrohosis of the liver and conditions affecting his gallbladder, heart, and cognitive abilities” (NYSCEF # 1 ¶ 7). It is alleged that Plaintiff’s supervisors including Robert Lindgren and Andy Pizzimenti were repeatedly informed by one of Plaintiff’s colleagues that Plaintiff was in a disabled condition (id. at ¶ 8). In total, Plaintiff spent approximately nine weeks in the hospital and rehabilitation center (NYSCEF # 44 ¶ 9). Approximately during the fall of 2020, Plaintiff became aware that he was terminated from employment with Mount Sinai Hospital (NYSCEF # 1 ¶ 23-27). Subsequently, approximately two years after Plaintiff’s coma, Plaintiff moved to Florida and lived with his daughter (NYSCEF # 43 at 3).
After concluding that the motions must be denied as to the State Law, the court turned to its assessment of the City Law:
Unlike the State HRL, the City HRL’s definition of ‘disability’ does not include ‘reasonable accommodation’ or the ability to perform a job in a reasonable manner,” but rather “defines ‘disability’ solely in terms of impairments” (Jacobsen, 22 NY3d at 834, quoting Romanello, 22 NY3d at 885). The City HRL forbids employment discrimination against physically and mentally impaired individuals (see id.; Administrative Code of City of N.Y. § 8–107[15][b]). Thus, unlike the State HRL, the City HRL places the burden on the employer to show the unavailability of any safe and reasonable accommodation, and the employer must show that any proposed accommodation would place an undue hardship on its business (see Romanello, 22 NY3d at 885).
Although the State HRL and City HRL maintain separate burdens of proof at trial regarding the existence of a reasonable accommodation, under both statutes an employee’s request for an accommodation is relevant to the determination of whether a reasonable accommodation can be made (see Jacobsen, 22 NY3d at 835). In that regard, the State HRL defines a “reasonable accommodation” as an accommodating action that does not unreasonably burden the employer “from which [the] action is requested” (id., citing Executive Law § 292 [21–e]). By defining a “reasonable accommodation” in terms of an employee’s request for accommodation and the employer’s ability to conduct its operations within the limits of the employee’s proposed arrangement, the statute indicates that an employee’s suggestion of a specific accommodation must prompt the employer to consider whether the accommodation is reasonable to the employer’s business (see id.). Thus, the employer’s response to the employee’s request and any subsequent dialogue regarding the proposed accommodation shall determine whether a reasonable accommodation exists (see id.).
The City HRL requires that an employer make reasonable accommodations to allow a person with a disability to satisfy the essential requisites of a job, provided that the disability is known or should have been known by the employer (see Romanello, 22 NY3d at 885). The State HRL’s definitions of “reasonable accommodation” and “disability” require that when an employee seeks a specific accommodation for his or her disability, the employer must give individualized consideration to that request and may not arbitrarily reject the employee’s proposal without further inquiry (see Jacobsen, 22 NY3d at 836).
Moreover, the City HRL provides employers an affirmative defense if the employee cannot, with reasonable accommodation, “satisfy the essential requisites of the job” (Administrative Code § 8–107[15][b]). Thus, the employer, not the employee, has the “pleading obligation” to prove that the employee “could not, with reasonable accommodation, satisfy the essential requisites of the job” (Romanello, 22 NY3d at 885).
Here, Plaintiff, through his son Vincent Kocher and Javier Cruz, made his disability known to Defendant (NYSCEF # 55 at 23, 24, 30). At this juncture, there is a question of fact on whether Defendant met its obligation under the City HRL to plead and prove that Plaintiff could not perform his essential job functions with an accommodation.
The court thus concluded that there is a question of fact that Plaintiff would not be able to do perform the essential functions as an IT specialist through an accommodation of remote/virtual work.