You asked your manager if you could shift your hours on Tuesdays.
Nothing dramatic. You had appointments; you’d make up the time; you’d been doing the job well for four years. She said she’d look into it.
What came back wasn’t an answer. It was a different workplace. Meetings you used to run now happen without you. Your manager starts putting things in writing that were never in writing before. There’s a comment about whether you’re really able to handle the role. Six weeks later you’re on a performance plan, and the problems it lists are news to you.
Nobody ever said no to the schedule change. They just made you sorry you asked.
As of December 5, 2025, that is a violation of New York law on its own, separate from anything else that happened to you.
The Gap That Used to Exist
Here’s the strange position New York workers were in until recently.
The State Human Rights Law has long required employers to provide reasonable accommodations. For disability. For pregnancy-related conditions. For religious observance. For domestic violence victim status. Denying a proper request has been unlawful for years.
But the law’s retaliation provision listed only two kinds of protected activity. Opposing practices forbidden under the law, and filing a complaint, testifying, or assisting in a proceeding. Asking for an accommodation was not on the list.
Courts split on what that omission meant, and some, including New York intermediate appellate courts, read it the way employers wanted: under the State Human Rights Law, a request for a reasonable accommodation is not protected activity for purposes of a retaliation claim.
The sponsor of the bill that fixed this described the result bluntly. In his words, it created a perverse situation where an employee must be granted an accommodation in the workplace, but an employer can legally fire them for asking for it in the first place.
If you worked in New York City, you were already covered. Local Law 129 of 2019 added requesting a reasonable accommodation to the City Human Rights Law’s list of protected activity, effective that November. Federal law covers it too. It was the state law, the one that reaches every worker in New York whether or not they’re in the five boroughs, that had the hole in it.
What Changed
On December 5, 2025, Governor Hochul signed the Reasonable Accommodation Anti-Retaliation Act. It amended Executive Law section 296(7), the retaliation provision, by adding a third category of protected activity: requesting a reasonable accommodation under the Human Rights Law.
So the provision now reads on three grounds rather than two. It is an unlawful discriminatory practice to retaliate or discriminate against someone because that person opposed practices forbidden under the law, filed a complaint or testified or assisted in a proceeding, or requested a reasonable accommodation.
You do not have to have been granted the accommodation. You do not have to have been denied it. The request itself is the protected act. That matters, because the most common version of this story is the one where nobody ever formally answers the request at all.
A Detail Worth Knowing
The statute says something unusual about itself, and it could matter in your case.
In its legislative findings, the Act states that its amendments declare and clarify existing law, and that the Act should not be construed to mean the Executive Law did not already prohibit retaliation for requesting a reasonable accommodation.
Read that again. The Legislature did not say it was creating a new right. It said it was making explicit something the law already contained, and it went out of its way to foreclose the argument that the protection didn’t exist before December 2025.
That is deliberate drafting, and it is useful to anyone whose retaliation began before the amendment. The Act applies to all actions filed on or after its effective date, so the question for older conduct is a live one rather than a closed one.
What Counts as an Accommodation Request
Broader than most people assume. The Human Rights Law requires accommodations in several situations, and the sponsor’s memorandum lists them.
Disability, in several provisions of section 296. Pregnancy-related conditions, which the law treats as temporary disabilities. Religious observance and practice. And status as a victim of domestic violence.
It also isn’t limited to the workplace. The Act covers requests made at the job site, in housing, and in places of public accommodation, which the law defines broadly enough to include hospitals, clinics, restaurants, retail stores, and government buildings.
The statute attaches no formality to the word “requested.” It doesn’t require a form, a particular phrase, or a citation to the law. Asking your supervisor whether you can adjust your schedule for treatment is asking. So is asking for a chair, a modified duty, time off for observance, or a change in how a task gets assigned.
Your Personnel File Is in This Statute
There’s a sentence in the retaliation provision most people never notice, and the 2025 Act extended it.
The statute says retaliation may include disclosing an employee’s personnel files. That language came in through a 2022 amendment, and the Reasonable Accommodation Anti-Retaliation Act also added accommodation requests. So if your employer responds to your request by circulating what’s in your file, that is named in the statute as a form of retaliation.
There is a carve-out. Disclosure made in the course of commencing or responding to a complaint, or in a civil or criminal action or other judicial or administrative proceeding as permitted by law, isn’t covered. Litigation is not retaliation. Passing your file around the office is a different matter.
What Retaliation Actually Looks Like
It is rarely a firing the week after you ask. Employers know how that reads.
It’s documentation that starts after the request and not before. Four years of clean reviews, then a sudden written record of concerns nobody raised while they were supposedly happening.
It’s a performance improvement plan that arrives without any prior conversation, listing problems you’re hearing about for the first time.
It’s exclusion. The meetings, the accounts, the assignments that used to be yours quietly going elsewhere, often framed as concern for your workload.
It’s a change in tone. A manager who was warm and is now careful. Requests to put things in email that were always handled by phone.
It’s the accommodation itself being granted and then used against you. The schedule change approved, and then the reduced visibility that follows it cited as evidence you’re not committed.
Sometimes the request simply disappears, the subject is never raised again, and the atmosphere is never the same.
What to Write Down
The date you asked, who you asked, and exactly how you put it. If it was a conversation, send a short email afterward confirming what you discussed and asking about next steps. That email is worth more later than you can imagine now.
What the job looked like before. Reviews, commendations, the accounts you ran, the meetings you were in. Retaliation cases are built on the contrast, and the contrast disappears if you don’t preserve the before.
Every change that followed, with dates. Who told you, what reason was given, and whether that reason had ever come up previously.
Who else knew about the request. Whether HR was involved, and what they did.
And anything suggesting your file was discussed with people who had no business seeing it.
The Bottom Line
For years, employers argued that New York workers had a right to an accommodation but no right to keep their job after asking for one, and some courts agreed. In December 2025, the Legislature wrote the answer into the statute and said the protection had been there all along.
If you asked for something you needed and the job changed afterward, the question isn’t whether you can prove anyone said the quiet part. It’s whether the record shows a workplace that treated you one way before the request and another way after.
That record is usually sitting in your own email, and it’s usually more complete than people think.
Risman & Risman, P.C. represents employees throughout New York and New Jersey. Call 212-233-6400 or contact us online.
This article discusses New York law in general terms as of October 2026, and the law in this area is actively changing. It is not legal advice, and reading it does not create an attorney-client relationship. Every situation turns on its own facts, including when the request was made, how the employer responded, and when any claim is filed. If you believe you have been retaliated against for requesting an accommodation, speak with a lawyer about your particular circumstances.