This article quotes three kinds of document. Statute: 42 U.S.C. §12203 (United States Code, 2024 Edition), retrieved September 29, 2026. Regulation: 29 CFR §1630.12 (2025 annual edition), retrieved September 29, 2026. EEOC enforcement guidance: the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission's Enforcement Guidance on Retaliation and Related Issues (EEOC-CVG-2016-1, issue date August 25, 2016), retrieved September 29, 2026, whose own 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 whether anything said or done to you is interference, or whether you have a claim. That is for the EEOC, the New York State Division of Human Rights, or a lawyer; our legal resources guide lists where to start in Western New York. 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.
Retaliation, the punishment that can follow once a person has used a right under the Americans with Disabilities Act, is covered in losing a job you fought to get and when an accommodation stops working. This article is about the rule beside it in the same section of the statute, which reaches the pressure that can stop a person using a right at all: a warning before a request, a condition attached to an application, a threat attached to a reference.
Three Layers: The Statute, the Regulation, and the Commission's Reading
The section is headed “Prohibition against retaliation and coercion”. Subsection (a) is the retaliation rule. Subsection (b), headed “Interference, coercion, or intimidation”, is one sentence:
“It shall be unlawful to coerce, intimidate, threaten, or interfere with any individual in the exercise or enjoyment of, or on account of his or her having exercised or enjoyed, or on account of his or her having aided or encouraged any other individual in the exercise or enjoyment of, any right granted or protected by this chapter.”
It covers any individual: someone using a right, someone who has used one, and someone who helped another person use theirs. And to threaten is listed on its own, beside coercing, intimidating and interfering.
The EEOC's regulation sets out the rule in its own wording, under the heading “Coercion, interference or intimidation”, and adds a verb the statute does not have:
“It is unlawful to coerce, intimidate, threaten, harass or interfere with any individual in the exercise or enjoyment of, or because that individual aided or encouraged any other individual in the exercise of, any right granted or protected by this part.”
The added verb is harass. The two are separate documents, quoted and labelled separately.
The third layer is not law. It is the Commission's reading of the rule, in its enforcement guidance under the heading “III. ADA INTERFERENCE PROVISION”, and three of its points come before any example:
Broader than retaliation. “The interference provision is broader than the anti-retaliation provision, protecting any individual who is subject to coercion, threats, intimidation, or interference with respect to ADA rights.” In the Commission's explanation, it “will reach even those instances when conduct does not meet the ‘materially adverse’ standard required for retaliation.”
The threat need not be carried out. “A threat does not have to be carried out in order to violate the interference provision, and an individual does not actually have to be deterred from exercising or enjoying ADA rights in order for the interference to be actionable.”
The same as retaliation on one point. “As with ADA retaliation, an applicant or employee need not establish that he is an ‘individual with a disability’ or ‘qualified’ in order to prove interference under the ADA”. That is shared with retaliation, not a difference from it.
Three Moments in a Job Search, in the Commission's Own Examples
The guidance lists conduct it would treat as interference. Three of its examples fall where a job search does, and the words in quotation marks are the Commission's.
1. During the application. The Commission's list includes “intimidating an applicant from requesting accommodation for the application process by indicating that such a request will result in the applicant not being hired”. The pressure comes before any request is made.
2. Before an offer. A worked example is titled “Refusal to Consider Applicant Unless He Submits to Unlawful Pre-Employment Medical Examination”. An applicant turns down an interviewer's request for a medical exam before any offer; the interviewer will not consider the application without it, so the applicant takes it. The Commission concludes that the employer engaged in interference, whether or not the applicant is qualified or is hired. When an employer may ask for a medical exam at all belongs to our article on the offer and the medical exam.
3. At the reference. The list also includes “interfering with a former employee's right to file an ADA lawsuit against the former employer by stating that a negative job reference will be given to prospective employers if the suit is filed”. It reaches into the next search, because the reference goes to prospective employers.
All three turn on words: what a request will cost, what an application requires, what a reference will say. They show how the Commission reads the rule, not how any one situation comes out.
Where the Rule Stops
The limit follows directly after the list of examples. In full:
“The interference provision does not apply to any and all conduct or statements that an individual finds intimidating.”
“In the Commission's view, it only prohibits conduct that is reasonably likely to interfere with the exercise or enjoyment of ADA rights.”
So, on the Commission's reading, finding a statement intimidating is not enough on its own; the measure is conduct “reasonably likely to interfere”, and the Commission marks that measure as its own view. Whether a particular statement meets it is a judgment about facts, and this article does not make it.
Claiming: that the statute and the EEOC's regulation make it unlawful to coerce, intimidate, threaten or interfere with any individual in the exercise or enjoyment of ADA rights, the regulation adding “harass”; that the Commission reads the rule as broader than retaliation, with examples at the application, before an offer and at the reference; and that, in its view, the rule reaches only conduct reasonably likely to interfere.
Not claiming: that anything said or done to you is interference, that it was unlawful, or that you have a claim. The examples and the reading are the Commission's, and the guidance says its contents are not meant to bind the public. That judgment belongs to the EEOC, the New York State Division of Human Rights, or a lawyer who has heard all of it.
One Habit, and Where to Take It
Every one of those examples turns on words, so the practical advice here is a single habit: write down what was said, when, and by whom. That is the whole of it.
If you are weighing whether to take something further, deadlines apply, and the charge clock sets them out in the EEOC's own words. Our legal resources guide covers who to ask in Western New York: the EEOC's Buffalo office, the New York State Division of Human Rights, and legal aid. And when the next step is simply the next job, finding work that fits is what we do.
The statute is 42 U.S.C. §12203 as published on govinfo.gov in the United States Code, 2024 Edition; its only source credit is the Act of July 26, 1990. The regulation is 29 CFR §1630.12 in the 2025 annual edition of the Code of Federal Regulations on govinfo.gov (edition date July 1, 2025), which govinfo serves as the most recent; the Federal Register lists no document on part 1630 published since January 1, 2025. The guidance is the EEOC's Enforcement Guidance on Retaliation and Related Issues (EEOC-CVG-2016-1, issue date 08-25-2016), section III, which carried no notice of rescission or revision when we read it. All three were retrieved on September 29, 2026. Laws, regulations and guidance change; if this article ever disagrees with the current text of any of them, trust the current text and tell us.