The April 16 Board of Governors meeting was streamed via YouTube. APSCUF President Dr. Kenneth M. Mash delivered brief extemporaneous comments and turned over the remainder of APSCUF’s time to Dr. Jessica Hughes, chair of APSCUF’s ad hoc disability-rights committee. The video is set to start at the beginning of Mash’s remarks. Hughes’ comments as prepared appear below. The referenced report, which was approved by APSCUF’s executive council, is embedded at the end of the post.
Hello. Last time, I spoke on behalf of myself and used my three minutes of public comment to talk about work the State System needs to do to bring all campuses into ADA compliance. Today, I’m proud to speak on behalf of APSCUF and PASSHE faculty with disabilities.
The APSCUF Disability Rights Committee was convened shortly after a coalition of faculty spoke out in the October 2024 Board meeting about the ways in which the State System has failed to uphold its commitments to accessibility and inclusion.
The document I’m presenting today demonstrates that this is still true. PASSHE is not upholding its own stated commitments
to [cultivate] diverse, equitable, and inclusive environments that allow all members of the State System community to thrive. (PASSHE DEI, n.d.)
Nor is the State System’s work currently “grounded in, …[built] upon, and …elevate[d in] the promising initiatives and thought leadership already occurring across the universities” (PASSHE DEI, n.d.).
Not only is PASSHE not upholding its inclusive mission, the State System has been in consistent and pervasive violation of civil rights law since the passage of the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) in 1990. The ADA is a bare minimum. This civil rights law establishes the floor for disability rights. More than three decades since it passed, PASSHE still has not met this threshold.
I’m here today with a Call for Action. We urge PASSHE to make more decisive moves to establish ADA compliance and eliminate disability discrimination across the State System.
Before I go on, let me reiterate that I am talking about civil rights of people with disabilities, who are estimated to comprise 20-25% of the human population, but these civil rights benefit everyone thanks to a phenomenon known in the disability community as the curb cut effect. Curb cuts are of course the small inclines that connect the sidewalk to the street at a corner. They were originally installed to enable wheelchair users to get around, but once they were everywhere we discovered that they make things better for everyone. They make corners more accessible for people with wheelchairs and other mobility aids, children, people who are just tired or injured or inebriated, people pushing strollers or grocery carts or carrying luggage. They help all of us avoid falling off the sidewalk and into the street at corners. This is the curb cut effect: Changes implemented to make things more accessible for people with disabilities increase access for all.
Similarly, I hope to convince you today that following the recommendations outlined in this Call for Action will be good for everyone in PASSHE, not just people with disabilities.
In the 15 months since the APSCUF Disability Rights Committee (DRC) was formed, we have worked to document disabled faculty members’ experiences and the disconnects between policies that look good on paper and practices on campus that create barriers for community members with disabilities.
The Call for Action I’m presenting today is a synthesis of this work. I’d like to thank everyone on the DRC, APSCUF leadership, and the APSCUF legal team for their help pulling it all together. As you can see, it’s a lot. 16 pages of ADA non-compliance issues, imperatives for action, and information about relevant disability law. I hope you find it informative and eye-opening and that you leverage the thought-leadership represented in this document to address the problems it describes.
Since I don’t have time to discuss the whole thing, in my remaining time I’ll just spotlight five ways in which HR policies have undermined PASSHE’s stated mission, specifically through 1) so-called full-time/full-duty work requirements, 2) denials of remote teaching accommodations, 3) onerous accommodation recertification requirements, 4) denial of appeals in faculty accommodations cases, and 5) misrepresentation of faculty rights under disability law. Changing HR policies and strengthening training for HR employees would not only address disability discrimination, it would reduce tedious and expensive bureaucracy, save our HR colleagues time better spent elsewhere, and help to re-establish trust between faculty, staff, and administration. These changes would also protect PASSHE from lawsuits.
1) Full-time/full-duty work requirements
To start with the first HR issue I mentioned: a “full time/full-duty” requirement has been referenced by HR and administrators across several campuses in a variety of cases to require faculty with disabilities to submit “full-time/full-duty” physician verifications at the end of a leave period saying that their disabilities are all gone and they’re back to 100%. But of course, that’s not how disabilities work. They are life-long conditions.
The “full-time/full-duty” policy has also been used repeatedly in denying remote accommodations for individuals with chronic health conditions and to compel “in-person” teaching, research, and service. This policy has also been cited by administration to justify refusing to compensate a faculty member for program coordinator work they’d already done, unless they submitted a doctor’s note saying they could go back to “full-time/full-duty” work.
To be clear, when I say cited, I mean that it’s been referenced in emails and conversations, but never presented in writing in full, though we’ve requested to see it many times.
A federal court has now twice held that the blanket implementation of a “full-time/full duty” requirement violates the Rehabilitation Act of 1973 and the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA). In Oross v. Kutztown Univ. (2023 WL 4748186, at *20 (E.D. Pa. July 25, 2023), the federal judge explicitly stated: “… the University’s policy of requiring [the faculty member] to return to work with no restrictions amounts to essentially a ‘100% healed’ policy that is a per se violation of the RA [Rehabilitation Act of 1973].”
2) Denials of remote teaching accommodations
The “full-time/full-duty” policy has also been referenced when PASSHE universities have denied reasonable accommodations based upon an erroneous interpretation of the “essential functions” of faculty. Requests for remote work as an accommodation have been routinely denied based on a mistaken premise that in-person instruction is an essential function or that reassigning remote teaching to accommodate disabled faculty is unreasonable. All of these are unlawful reasons to deny accommodation.
Recently, the Pennsylvania Commonwealth Court (Pennsylvania W. Univ. of Pennsylvania, State Sys. of Higher Educ. v. Ass’n of Pennsylvania State Coll. & Univ. Faculty, _____ A.3d._____ (Pa. Commw. Ct. Jan. 9, 2026)) affirmed an arbitrator’s award after PennWest University denied remote instruction to a chronically disabled faculty member. In that case the Commonwealth Court upheld the Award stating,
The claim that face-to-face instruction was an essential job function was unproven, and a full-time online assignment, while perhaps inconvenient…, would not have posed an undue hardship. The [University’s] refusal to grant [the grievant’s] requested accommodation was, therefore, violative of the [CBA].
3) Onerous accommodation recertification requirements.
Moving on to onerous accommodation recertification requirements: Here, I’m referring to university policies requiring faculty to recertify their need for disability accommodations every six months. I mentioned this issue briefly during my last visit, and I’d like to elaborate a bit more now.
Certification of a disability is required as part of the initial interactive process by which employees access accommodations. Through this process, employers gain an understanding of the employee’s limitations to determine reasonable accommodations. To establish this understanding, disabled employees must spend a significant amount of time, effort, stress, and money visiting doctors and gathering paperwork.
Once an individual’s disability is clearly established and understood, the need to recertify them is unnecessary, again because disability is, by definition, chronic. It’s not going to go away. Unless something else changes, e.g., the accommodation is no longer effective, poses an undue burden, or there is a significant change in limitations, there’s no need to revisit the interactive process.
Yet, PASSHE HR departments routinely demand paperwork to recertify disability status every six months. Some universities have imposed re-certification requirements under threat of job loss. Others threaten the rescission of accommodation unless the faculty member recertifies.
Such recertification policies are not only unnecessary and unlawful, they’re disabling. The repeated demand for duplicate documentation and reapplication to access accommodations costs significant time, effort, and stress to faculty and administrators as well as health care professionals. For people with disabilities, the added workload and stress around accessing accommodations twice a year at the risk of losing their job and benefits causes flares (worsening symptoms) and consumes energy that we need to maintain health and do our jobs. These medical certifications are invasive, humiliating, and disruptive.
By contrast, students with disabilities only need to submit one certification. This practice should be consistently applied to all students, faculty, and staff. The fact that a different practice exists for students and faculty is evidence that faculty re-certification policies are discriminatory. As our lawyers point out, a divergent implementation of the interactive process is evidence of an arbitrary and retaliatory animus toward faculty and staff with disabilities.
4) Denial of appeals in faculty accommodations cases
With regard to the last two HR issues I raised, I’d like to quickly highlight that, In many instances, the HR office that denied an employee’s accommodation request is the very same office that reviews the employee’s appeal, which has led to many unjust denials to be upheld, resulting in grievances and litigation.
5) Misrepresentation of faculty rights under disability law
Finally, the APSCUF DRC has documented pervasive and significant flaws in HR departments’ explanations of FMLA and ADA policies. HR and administrators have mistakenly told faculty that they are not eligible for ADA accommodations when they are. When faculty and staff come to them with questions, HR and administrators have said different things. We therefore strongly recommend that our HR colleagues be trained on legal requirements so that they are able to provide clear and accurate answers on disability and leave policies.
To close, thank you for listening and for demonstrating a willingness to address these issues over the past year. We are encouraged by the changes that are already being implemented in ADA coordination at the State level. We think this is a first step and hope this Call for Action provides a blueprint for where to go next.
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APSCUF Disability Committee - Call for Action 4.15.2026