DOJ Sued by Federal Attorneys for Denied Telework Accommodations

Lawyers for the US Department of Justice’s office overseeing immigration courts filed a federal class action claiming the agency’s no-telework policy is endangering the health of disabled employees.

The two named plaintiffs, Kimberly Panian and Hoi Yee Baxter, said the Executive Office of Immigration Review where they work as attorney-advisors has refused to provide reasonable telework accommodations despite their documented disabilities.

Panian, of California, has Type I diabetes and Baxter, of Texas, is being treated for Stage IV lung cancer and is immunocompromised, according to the suit filed Wednesday in the US District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia in Alexandria, Virginia.

The complaint said the office’s failure to provide telework accommodations violates the federal Rehabilitation Act, a civil rights statute that prohibits discrimination against disabled employees in the federal sector.

Panian and Baxter both received top performance reviews since they started teleworking during the Covid-19 pandemic and received additional extensions due to their disabilities, the suit said. That changed when President Donald Trump took office last year and ordered federal workers return to office full time, resulting in agencies denying telework as a reasonable accommodation for disabilities.

The plaintiffs seek to represent a class of disabled employees at the Executive Office of Immigration Review who were denied telework requests. The complaint said the class could contain hundreds of employees.

Democracy Forward Foundation represents the plaintiffs.

The case is Panian v. Blanche, E.D. Va., No. 1:26-cv-01537, 6/3/26.