Must an Employer Provide Lodging as a Reasonable Accommodation

I'm always looking for unusual legal precedents.  I shouldn't be surprised when they come from unusual sources. I receive emails from the Government Accountability Office listing the Comptroller General decisions they issue.  The Comptroller General of the U.S. GAO issues legal decisions and legal opinions on appropriations law, bid protests, and other issues of federal law.  Agencies can ask the Comptroller General for advice on whether federal law permits a specific expenditure. 

Today's e-mail from the GAO addressed whether the Department of Housing and Urban Development, Office of Inspector General, could us appropriated funds to pay for a reasonable accommodation for an employee who wanted the IG's office to provide her with lodging closer to where she would be performing audits.  

The Comptroller General decision addresses an unusual accommodation request.  Federal employees, by statute, are paid lodging expenses when they are "away from the employee's designated post of duty."  The employee's need for lodging, however, was not away from her post of duty.  There was, in other words, no authorization for paying the employees lodging for these trips. 

The Comptroller then addressed whether the appropriated funds could be spent nonetheless, as part of a reasonable accommodation, and concluded they could not because the requested accommodation was not reasonable:

An employer, however, is not required to provide for accommodations that fall outside the scope of employment, like commuting. Laresca v. American Telephone and Telegraph, 161 F. Supp. 2d. 323 (D.N.J. 2001). In this case the employee's drive is akin to a commute, traveling from the employee's home to the work site. Reasonable accommodations are directed at enabling an employee to perform the essential functions of the job itself, 29 C.F.R. sect. 1630.2(o)(1)(ii), and federal courts have held that activities like commuting to and from the workplace fall outside the scope of a job. Consequently, an employer is not obligated to provide a reasonable accommodation for such activities.

The Comptroller General encouraged the IG's office to find some other accommodation that would be effective.