The court’s ruling in Morrissey v. Mullin turns on a practical limit to accommodation disputes: an employer need not assign an employee to light duty before medical clearance. The U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia dismissed a Department of Homeland Security special agent’s disability discrimination and retaliation lawsuit on Monday. The decision rests on the sequence of events in this case: the agent sought a modified role, his doctor set limits on when he could work, and DHS kept him on approved paid leave until an assignment took effect. That sequence mattered more to the court than the agent’s preference for an earlier return.
Medical clearance shaped the return-to-work timeline
The agent injured his neck in a work-related vehicle accident in 2018 and had spinal surgery in April 2023. He asked for light-duty work, but his doctor initially said he couldn’t return until at least July. At a July evaluation, the doctor deemed him totally disabled and said October was the earliest he could resume even light-duty work. The medical assessments therefore did not support an immediate transition to modified duties, even though the agent had requested that option. In accommodation disputes, the distinction between an employee’s requested arrangement and the work a clinician says is medically possible can become decisive.
DHS kept him on approved paid leave, drawing on his accrued leave, until a light-duty assignment took effect on Nov. 6, 2023. The agent requested a later start and returned on Nov. 13 or 14. The gap between the assignment date and his actual return was short, and the account given to the court includes his request to delay starting. That detail complicates any simple reading of the timeline as an agency refusing to bring him back: the record described both the employer’s offer and the employee’s requested start date.
The agency also temporarily suspended his authority to carry a badge and firearm, citing concern that his medical condition could affect safe weapon use. After his doctor cleared him without restrictions, he returned to full duty and regained both in February 2024. For a special agent, carrying a firearm is tied to the operational demands of the job, so the agency treated that authority as a separate question from whether he could perform light-duty work. The account does not describe the underlying medical concern in detail; the court’s decision, as summarized here, centers on clearance and the timing of work assignments.
The court’s reasoning
Suing the Homeland Security secretary under the Rehabilitation Act, the agent argued DHS should have offered light duty sooner and sought $25 million in damages. The court held that medical leave can be a reasonable accommodation and that employers aren’t required to provide an employee’s preferred option. Because the agent hadn’t been medically cleared for light duty earlier, the court said DHS couldn’t reasonably have assigned him to it. The ruling applies that principle to the record before the court: paid leave covered the period when the doctor said he couldn’t work, while a light-duty assignment followed when the timeline allowed.
That distinction matters because accommodation is not always synonymous with keeping an employee at work in some capacity. Similar disputes often turn on whether a requested adjustment would let the employee perform work safely and whether the employer has another reasonable way to address the limitation. Here, the court treated medical leave as an available accommodation during the period when the doctor’s assessments ruled out even light duty. The decision doesn’t establish that leave will resolve every accommodation dispute; it explains why the facts in this case supported DHS’s approach.
Retaliation claim and the limits of the ruling
The retaliation claim was dismissed as well. The agent didn’t respond to the government’s arguments for dismissal and didn’t plausibly connect his protected activity to the agency’s employment decisions. A retaliation claim requires more than the fact that protected activity and an adverse employment decision appear in the same history; the claim must plausibly link them. On the account available, the court found that link missing, and the agent’s failure to answer the government’s arguments left the court without a response to its grounds for dismissal.
There’s a procedural point here that can get lost beside the medical timeline (and this is the part most people overlook): the discrimination and retaliation claims did not turn on precisely the same reasoning. The accommodation dispute focused on medical clearance and leave, while the retaliation claim also failed because the agent did not plausibly connect protected activity to the challenged decisions. A dismissal can therefore reflect both the underlying record and the way a claim is presented to the court.
What the decision may mean for employers and workers
The ruling leaves medical clearance as the central factor in this case’s accommodation timeline. This is more significant than it looks: a request for light duty does not, by itself, show that an employee is ready to perform it, and an employer’s decision to use paid leave may be reasonable when medical guidance bars work. For employers, the practical lesson is to consider the employee’s documented restrictions and the timing of each assessment. For workers, a clear medical record can help explain when duties can resume and what limits remain.
If you’re working in this space, the useful question is how the medical guidance, the proposed assignment, and the employer’s response line up over time. The opinion’s account gives those details unusual weight. Still, the ruling is tied to this agent’s circumstances and the arguments made in court; it shouldn’t be read as a blanket rule that any leave arrangement or weapon restriction will be reasonable. The numbers here are underwhelming as a guide to broader policy: one case can clarify how a court assessed a particular record, but it can’t answer every workplace accommodation question.
And yet. The timeline offers a concrete reminder that accommodation disputes may hinge on whether the requested work was medically available at the moment it was sought, not simply whether a modified assignment eventually became possible.