The rules quoted here come from two documents, both retrieved on September 30, 2026. The statute: 42 U.S.C. §12111 (United States Code, 2024 Edition). The EEOC's enforcement guidance: Enforcement Guidance on Reasonable Accommodation and Undue Hardship under the ADA (EEOC-CVG-2003-1, issued October 17, 2002). The guidance predates the ADA Amendments Act of 2008 and says so in a notice at the top; its disclaimer says its contents “do not have the force and effect of law and are not meant to bind the public in any way.” Nothing here tells you that you are entitled to a reassignment, that any position is “vacant”, or that you are “qualified” for it. That is worked out in your employer's accommodation process, and if a dispute follows, with the EEOC, the New York State Division of Human Rights or a lawyer. The Job Accommodation Network at askjan.org helps with accommodations free of charge. Innovative Placements is a connector — we help people with disabilities find work in Western New York — and we are not lawyers or a government agency.
Sometimes, after everything has been tried, the honest answer is that the job itself no longer fits. The schedule changed, the equipment arrived, a few duties moved to a coworker, and an essential part of the work is still out of reach because of a disability. Most people assume that is where the road ends.
The ADA lists one more accommodation for exactly that point. It comes last, after every accommodation that could keep you in your current job; how an employer gets there is covered in choosing among effective accommodations. This article is about what happens once you are there.
Where Reassignment Sits
In the statute it is one item in a list of what a reasonable accommodation “may include”: “job restructuring, part-time or modified work schedules, reassignment to a vacant position, acquisition or modification of equipment or devices”, and more. The EEOC's guidance gives it a section of its own, which opens with who it is for:
“This type of reasonable accommodation must be provided to an employee who, because of a disability, can no longer perform the essential functions of his/her current position, with or without reasonable accommodation, unless the employer can show that it would be an undue hardship.”
Note the words employee and no longer: it is for people already in a job that has stopped fitting. Both come back below.
The Sentence That Makes It Different From Applying
Most people who want another job at the same employer apply for it and compete. The guidance asks whether reassignment works that way:
“Does reassignment mean that the employee is permitted to compete for a vacant position? No. Reassignment means that the employee gets the vacant position if s/he is qualified for it. Otherwise, reassignment would be of little value and would not be implemented as Congress intended.”
That is the centre of the subject. In the Commission's words, a qualified employee gets the position. And qualified does not mean the strongest candidate: “The employee does not need to be the best qualified individual for the position in order to obtain it as a reassignment.” Hold it as what it is: the Commission's position, in guidance that says it does not bind the public. How a court would apply it to a particular job is a question for a lawyer, and this article makes no claim about courts either way.
There is a limit on the other side. The employer “does not have to provide training so that the employee acquires necessary skills to take a job”; the guidance's example is a position needing Spanish, which the employee never learned. But it “would have to provide an employee with a disability who is being reassigned with any training that is normally provided to anyone hired for or transferred to the position.”
What Counts as Vacant
“‘Vacant’ means that the position is available when the employee asks for reasonable accommodation, or that the employer knows that it will become available within a reasonable amount of time.”
“A position is considered vacant even if an employer has posted a notice or announcement seeking applications for that position. The employer does not have to bump an employee from a job in order to create a vacancy; nor does it have to create a new position.”
So a posted job, with other people applying, still counts. But nobody has to be moved out to make room, and no job has to be invented. For “a reasonable amount of time”, the guidance gives two examples, which are examples and not rules: an equivalent position that “will become vacant in four weeks” must be offered to a qualified employee, while one whose holder “plans to retire in six months” need not be, “because six months is beyond a ‘reasonable amount of time.’”
Which Job: Equivalent First, Then Lower, Never Up
“The employer must reassign the individual to a vacant position that is equivalent in terms of pay, status, or other relevant factors (e.g., benefits, geographical location) if the employee is qualified for the position. If there is no vacant equivalent position, the employer must reassign the employee to a vacant lower level position for which the individual is qualified.”
“Reassignment does not include giving an employee a promotion. Thus, an employee must compete for any vacant position that would constitute a promotion.”
Asked whether the old salary has to follow into a lower position, the guidance answers: “No, unless the employer transfers employees without disabilities to lower level positions and maintains their original salaries.” The same order, an equivalent vacancy and then a lower one, is what the guidance applies when a job cannot be held open through a long medical leave, which the sick leave article covers.
Who Looks, How Far, and When the Search Is Done
The guidance starts from who knows the openings: “The employer is in the best position to know which jobs are vacant or will become vacant within a reasonable period of time.” So the search is the employer's, with a part for you:
“In order to narrow the search for potential vacancies, the employer, as part of the interactive process, should ask the employee about his/her qualifications and interests. Based on this information, the employer is obligated to inform an employee about vacant positions for which s/he may be eligible as a reassignment. However, an employee should assist the employer in identifying appropriate vacancies to the extent that the employee has access to information about them.”
The most useful things to bring to that conversation are a clear account of what you can do, what you would like to do, and anything you know about openings.
Two common answers do not end the search on their own. A no-transfer policy: the employer “would have to modify that policy in order to reassign an employee with a disability, unless it could show undue hardship.” And nothing is open in this office: the guidance says the search is not limited to the employee's own office, department, facility or geographical area, and that how far it must go “will be an issue of undue hardship.” A move to another area has a cost that is usually yours: “the employee must pay for any relocation expenses unless the employer routinely pays such expenses when granting voluntary transfers to other employees.”
And the search can end without a job:
“When an employer has completed its search, identified whether there are any vacancies (including any positions that will become vacant in a reasonable amount of time), notified the employee of the results, and either offered an appropriate vacancy to the employee or informed him/her that no appropriate vacancies are available, the employer will have fulfilled its obligation.”
Read the end of that sentence twice. On the Commission's reading, an employer that searched properly and reported that nothing fits has done what reassignment requires. It is an obligation to look and to offer what fits, not a promise that something will.
Who It Covers, and the Rule That Usually Wins
A newer employee on probation. “Employers cannot deny a reassignment to an employee solely because s/he is designated as ‘probationary.’” What counts is whether the employee “adequately performed the essential functions of the position, with or without reasonable accommodation, before the need for a reassignment arose.” A probationary employee who “has never adequately performed the essential functions, with or without reasonable accommodation” is not entitled to one.
Someone applying from outside. “Applicants are not entitled to reassignment.” A job seeker's accommodations belong in the application process itself.
A workplace with a seniority system. Here the guidance's answer begins with generally:
“Generally, it will be ‘unreasonable’ to reassign an employee with a disability if doing so would violate the rules of a seniority system.”
“This is true both for collectively bargained seniority systems and those unilaterally imposed by management.”
“However, if there are ‘special circumstances’ that ‘undermine the employees' expectations of consistent, uniform treatment,’ it may be a ‘reasonable accommodation,’ absent undue hardship, to reassign an employee despite the existence of a seniority system.”
The guidance's examples of special circumstances are an employer that keeps the right to change the system on its own and does so fairly often, and a system that already has exceptions. Whether that describes your workplace is a question for your union representative, where there is one, or a lawyer.
Where Reassignment Leaves a Career
Every rule above points sideways or down: equivalent first, lower next, never a promotion. That is not a reason to avoid it; a reassignment can keep you working for an employer that already knows your work. But the way up from there is the ordinary way. In the Commission's words, “an employee must compete for any vacant position that would constitute a promotion.”
You do not have to compete without accommodation. The same guidance says a request can be made “at any time during the application process or during the period of employment,” and should be made when a barrier is keeping you, because of a disability, from “effectively competing for a position, performing a job, or gaining equal access to a benefit of employment.” Employer-sponsored training is covered too, with accommodation so that employees with disabilities have “an equal opportunity to participate”, absent undue hardship. And if you are weighing a bigger change than one employer can offer, changing careers when your disability changes is about planning that move before it is forced on you.
The Honest Summary
Claiming: that the ADA lists reassignment to a vacant position among reasonable accommodations; that the EEOC's guidance makes it the last one, for an employee who can no longer perform the essential functions of the current job even with accommodation; and that, in the Commission's words, a qualified employee gets the vacant position rather than competing for it, need not be the best qualified, goes to an equivalent position before a lower one and never to a promotion, and is owed a search whose result the employer reports.
Not claiming: that you are entitled to a reassignment, that any position is vacant or that you are qualified for it, that any search was adequate, or how a court would apply the Commission's reading. New York has its own Human Rights Law, enforced by the state's Division of Human Rights, and this article does not describe how it treats reassignment. Those judgments belong to the EEOC, the Division, or a lawyer who has heard all of it.
Where to Take It
Reassignment normally comes after the conversation about your current job, not instead of it, and job restructuring covers what can move inside the job you have. For a question about your rights, our legal resources guide covers where to start in Western New York, and the Job Accommodation Network offers, in its own words, “free, expert, and confidential guidance on workplace accommodations.” And if the search comes back empty and the next step is a job somewhere else, finding work that fits is what we do.
The statute is 42 U.S.C. §12111, United States Code, 2024 Edition, on govinfo.gov. The guidance is the EEOC's Enforcement Guidance on Reasonable Accommodation and Undue Hardship under the ADA (EEOC-CVG-2003-1, issue date 10-17-2002): its section headed “Reassignment”, and its answers on when to request an accommodation and on training. The page carries the Commission's notice about the ADA Amendments Act of 2008, and no notice of rescission or revision when we read it. Its footnotes cite court cases; we have not read them, and nothing here relies on them. The Job Accommodation Network's words are from askjan.org and the Division of Human Rights' role from dhr.ny.gov. All were retrieved on September 30, 2026. If this article ever disagrees with the current text of any of them, trust the current text and tell us.