Need a health exemption at work? Your note must show why

You have a health condition, and a rule at work seems impossible to follow. You ask for an exemption, send a doctor's note and wait at home. A July 2026 decision of the Ontario Superior Court shows how that can end: with no job and no severance.

Ask about your situation

What happened

A foreperson had worked 17 years for the Toronto Transit Commission when, in September 2021, he asked to be exempted from its mandatory mask policy. His family doctor's form pointed to a migraine disorder.

The employer's medical consultant found no basis for an exemption, the request was denied, and the employer later asked for specialist reports. He never went back. Placed on unpaid leave, he sued for constructive dismissal, asking for back pay and almost 15 months' notice.

What the court decided

The judge accepted that a migraine disorder is a disability. The employer had already accommodated it, with a permanent "no night shifts" restriction backed by a neurologist's report. But nothing linked the migraines to wearing a mask:

• At trial, his own doctor admitted parts of the form were wrong, and that the migraines weren't related to the restriction.
• Two neurologists he saw that year didn't support an exemption.
• A disability, the judge wrote, can't be established solely by a person's own belief that they have one.

With no link, the employer had no duty to accommodate. The policy was a valid condition of the job, and refusing to come to work under it was, in the court's words, "akin to repudiation" of his contract: he had ended it himself. The claim was dismissed. He got only $2,792, a week of sick pay his manager had promised and the employer never paid.

If you need an exemption

Ontario's Human Rights Code protects you from discrimination at work because of a disability (s. 5(1)), and your employer must accommodate your needs unless that would cause undue hardship (s. 17(2)). This case shows what makes the request work:

• Ask your doctor to explain the link: the condition, the limitation it causes, and why it stops you from following that particular rule.
• Answer every request for more information, quickly. The court noted that the employee's part is to cooperate in the process.
• Don't stay home on your own. Ask in writing what you should do while the request is reviewed: other duties, a leave, sick days.
• Keep track of what you're promised. The one thing he won was the week his manager agreed to code as sick.

Describe your situation and our assistant answers with the law and Ontario decisions. Or read this decision or more cases on the duty to accommodate.

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