A Fifth Circuit Court ruling in May 2025 breathed new life into Alisha Strife’s disability discrimination lawsuit against her employer, the Aldine Independent School District. Strife is a veteran with a VA disability rating. She asked to bring her mobility assistance dog, Indie, to work. Six months passed as the school district asked for additional documentation – and then more documentation – and then an independent medical evaluation. Strife claimed accommodation stonewalling and sued for workplace discrimination under the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA), the Rehabilitation Act of 1973, and Texas disabilities law.

The Southern District of Texas dismissed her lawsuit with a motion for summary judgment. The Fifth Circuit Court reversed that action, tackling three troublesome questions:

• Whether a six-month delay in initiating the interactive ADA process of her request for reasonable accommodation could be evidence of discrimination, even when the school district granted her request;
• Did she need to demonstrate additional harm cased because of the delay; and
• When is a delay so long that it suggests bad faith?

The reversal is good news for disabled Texas veteran because Alisha Strife got her day in court. But it leaves some issues unresolved.

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Employer Delays and Failure to Accommodate: Stonewalling at Every Turn Created Undue Hardship for this Injured Warrier

Alisha Strife is an Army veteran who served in Kuwait and Iraq during Operation Iraqi Freedom. While she was deployed in 2004, she sustained a traumatic brain injury as well as shoulder and leg injuries. She was discharged in 2005. She was diagnosed with PTSD, osteopenia, depression, and anxiety. She falls easily and has repeatedly broken bones. The Veterans Administration determined in 2017 that she is totally disabled.

After her military discharge in 2012, Strife went to work as a teacher in the Aldine Independent School District. When classroom teaching became too difficult, she transferred to the district’s Human Resources Department where she worked as a Performance Management Project Analyst. In 2022, Strife obtained a specially trained service dog to help her manage her disabilities. That August, she asked the school district to allow her service dog to come to work with her. By September, she began to suspect foot-dragging.

Disability Accommodation Delay Continued as the Application Process Slowed to a Crawl

After Strife made a reasonable accommodation request under the ADA, the district requested additional information. Strife provided a letter from her treating VA provider, who wrote that the dog was “invaluable to [the employee’s] mental and physical health recovery.” The district found the letter insufficient because the provider was not a board-certified medical doctor. Strife then provided a similar letter from her treating psychiatrist. The district then requested that she submit to an independent medical examination by a different doctor, who was not a psychiatrist or psychologist and had no expertise in diagnosing or treating PTSD, depression, or anxiety.

More Disability Accommodation Delays

Strife’s attorney provided three additional letters, including two from other physicians. She later underwent a VA-led exam (by a doctor other than the district’s choice) which confirmed that Strife had “chronically impaired standing balance and gait, with history of multiple falls and injuries including fractures requiring multiple leg surgeries,” and that her “condition is appropriate for the use of a mobility dog.”

In January 2023, she filed an Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) charge. In February 2023, Strife filed a federal lawsuit asserting five claims under the ADA, the Rehabilitation Act of 1973, and Texas state law. Later that month, the district conditionally approved Strife’s request to bring her service dog to the workplace. Six months had passed since she first made her request for reasonable accommodation.

The District Court dismissed Strife’s claim, finding that the school district’s delay was not unreasonable because she was able to continue working without accommodation and faced only “possible physical and psychological danger because she did not have her service dog.” By that reasoning, she would have had to suffer a new, foreseeable injury, like a fall or a fracture, to get the interactive process moving.

Was it an Interactive Process or a Hostile Work Environment?

In plain language, when a disabled worker asks for some change in working conditions, the employer must meet and work with the employee to determine if some modification would enable him or her to perform the basic functions of the job. The modification must be reasonable for both parties. However, the language of the law is not always so plain.

The official guidance provided by the EEOC relies heavily on examples qualified by adjectives like “reasonable” or “timely.” It is clear, however, that an employer may require an employee to “go to an appropriate health professional of the employer’s choice if the individual provides insufficient information from his/her treating physician (or other health care professional).”

However, “an employer cannot ask for documentation when: (1) both the disability and the need for reasonable accommodation are obvious, or (2) the individual has already provided the employer with sufficient information to substantiate that s/he has an ADA disability and needs the reasonable accommodation requested.”

Further, “[a]n employer should respond expeditiously to a request for reasonable accommodation. If the employer and the individual with a disability need to engage in an interactive process, this too should proceed as quickly as possible.”

There are no bright lines, which is unsatisfying in some ways. But the Fifth Circuit provided some clarity on the issue of an employer’s responsibility.

Two Takeaways

First, delays, especially of several months, may be evidence of an unreasonable failure to accommodate a request. Secondly, the appropriate question is simply whether the employer failed to accommodate, not whether the worker suffered an additional injury or change in the conditions of employment while waiting for a decision on the ADA accommodation request. The bottom line is that Strife deserved to have her evidence heard in court.

Kilgore Disability Discrimination Attorneys Defend Employment Rights and Workplace Accessibility

Our Texas employment lawyers have decades of experience with workplace discrimination, including disability discrimination. We have a long-standing workplace and USERRA discrimination practice and have helped many workers get the justice they deserve. Click on this link to learn about our workplace discrimination practice. Use this link Contact Kilgore Law to get the conversation started or call us at 214-969-9099 to see if we can help.