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The nation's largest HR group is headed to trial over a claim it botched a disability accommodation

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Sarah E. Needleman

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Jack Newsham

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The nation's largest HR group is set to face a jury this week over allegations that it mishandled a job applicant's request for a disability accommodation.

The trial comes after the Society for Human Resource Management, or SHRM, was hit by a jury with an $11.5 million verdict last year in an unrelated race discrimination and retaliation case involving a former employee. SHRM has since appealed that decision.

In the complaint for the lawsuit about to go to trial, plaintiff Fiona Torres alleges that SHRM offered her a role as a senior specialist in its product management department in June 2024, then revoked the offer that July because she wanted to bring her medical service dog to work. She said she is diabetic and that her dog could detect changes in her blood-sugar levels faster and more reliably than a top-tier glucose monitor.

"I was ready and able to work," Torres previously told Business Insider in an email through her attorney. "They said they were eager to have me until they found out I had a disability and a service dog."

In a January court filing in response to the allegations, SHRM said it offered Torres "multiple accommodations," including the ability to use her continuous glucose monitoring system and an insulin pump at work, to take breaks as needed to check her blood sugar levels, and to consume food or drink as needed at or near her workstation.

SHRM also posted a statement to its website on September 28 about the case, saying that it had "tried to understand Torres' need" for a service dog and what reasonable accommodations were available. SHRM further said it asked Torres to speak with her doctor about an alternative to the dog.

"This was a genuine good-faith attempt to find a mutually agreeable solution through an interactive process," the group said in the statement. "SHRM did not say no; we followed proper procedure."

The trial, which is scheduled to last four days, will take place in Alexandria, Virginia, where SHRM is headquartered.

Last year, Business Insider reported that SHRM had been embroiled in various controversies. Those included an attendance policy that penalized workers who arrived a minute after 9 a.m.; a memo about a "conservative" dress code that banned sequins; and a companywide meeting in which SHRM CEO Johnny C. Taylor said some staffers were "entitled," "complacent," and "sloppy."

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Sarah E. Needleman

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Sarah E. Needleman covers leadership and the workplace for Business Insider.Previously, she was a reporter for The Wall Street Journal for more than two decades, covering technology companies, entrepreneurship, and recruiting.In 2022, Sarah received an honorable mention with WSJ colleagues for their coverage of workplace misconduct at Activision Blizzard from the Society for Advancing Business Editing and Writing.Sarah graduated from Rutgers University in 1997 with a bachelor's degree in journalism. She lives with her husband, daughter, and fur child (an Australian labradoodle) in northern New Jersey.

Jack Newsham

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I am a correspondent on Business Insider's enterprise desk.I focus on money, power, and big names in business, politics and entertainment. I am currently focused on prediction markets, and legal affairs and the legal industry have been a longtime interest of mine.My email address is [email protected], and my Reddit username is u/JackNewsham. If you have sensitive information, please get in touch using your personal email address or connect on the secure messaging app Signal, where my username is jnewsham.77. Use a personal phone and a personal data or WiFi connection.I have broken news about people at the Elon Musk-linked Department of Government Efficiency, worked with whistleblowers, investigated how celebrity musicians spent millions of dollars in federal Shuttered Venue Operators Grants they received during the pandemic, delved into claims of racism and sexual misconduct at the $2.4 billion tech startup Rokt, and written about policing and the trial lawyer Alex Spiro.Previously, I wrote about both Big Law firms that represent big businesses and the plaintiffs' firms and litigation funders that oppose them.I am originally from St. Louis, and graduated from Yale with a bachelor's degree in economics.