Some workers are so unhappy about returning to the office that they're playing a legal card—asserting that they have a disability which necessitates that they work from home full-time, employment attorneys say.

"Many are arguing Covid-related reasons, but it doesn't have to be [Covid-related]," said David Barron, a member of the law firm Cozen O'Connor in Houston. "It could be some other type of disability that would warrant a reasonable accommodation to work from home." Workers seeking disability accommodations are relatively rare, attorneys say, but nonetheless reflect the strong resistance that a sizable slice of employees are showing to any in-the-office mandates.

It's a tricky landscape for corporate legal departments to navigate, attorneys say, in part because they could expose their companies to discrimination claims if they apply extensive flexibility to certain similarly situated workers but not others.