A Virginia jury hit SHRM with a $400,000 verdict for mishandling a diabetic applicant’s service-dog request, and the HR giant says the ruling endangers employers nationwide.
Business Insider reported that a jury in Alexandria, Virginia, found the Society for Human Resource Management liable on every count for failing to comply with the Americans with Disabilities Act and the Virginia Human Rights Act.
The panel awarded Fiona Torres $400,000 in compensatory damages. It awarded no punitive damages. The case was tried in the city where SHRM is headquartered.
Torres had been offered a job. Then the offer disappeared after she asked to bring her medical service dog to work.
Per the complaint described in the reporting, SHRM offered Torres a role as senior specialist in its product management department in June 2024. In July, it revoked the offer.
She said she is diabetic. She said her service dog could detect changes in her blood-sugar levels faster and more reliably than a top-tier glucose monitor. That request, she alleged, is why the offer died.
SHRM told a different story in a January court filing. The group said it offered Torres multiple accommodations short of the dog.
Those options, SHRM said, included use of her continuous glucose monitoring system and an insulin pump at work, breaks as needed to check her blood sugar, and the ability to consume food or drink at or near her workstation.
The jury was not persuaded. It found the nation’s largest HR organization liable for mishandling the accommodation request and stuck SHRM with the six-figure compensatory award.
After the Friday verdict, SHRM posted a statement on its website disagreeing with the outcome and saying it is weighing an appeal.
The group framed the case as bigger than its own hiring decision.
"This case carries implications well beyond SHRM. If today's verdict becomes precedent for the principle that an employer must always capitulate to an employee's exact preferred accommodation, the interactive process the ADA was built around ceases to function. We are evaluating all appellate options to protect not just our own position, but the operational rights of HR departments and employers nationwide."
That “interactive process” is the back-and-forth federal disability law expects employers and workers to attempt when a medical accommodation is on the table. SHRM’s argument is blunt: if the employee’s preferred fix always wins, the process stops being a negotiation and becomes a rubber stamp.
Mary Kuntz, the lawyer for Torres, praised the verdict and pointed straight at SHRM’s dual role as defendant and industry guide.
"The law requires employers to look seriously at an employee's actual needs when an accommodation is requested. That obligation applies to every employer, including the organization so many others rely on for guidance on these questions."
SHRM sells HR certifications and trains employers on workplace practice. It is the organization many companies look to when they want to know how to handle disability requests, discipline, and hiring risk. A jury just found that same organization failed the disability statutes it helps others navigate.
The Torres verdict was not SHRM’s first costly courtroom defeat in short order. In December, a jury returned an $11.5 million verdict against the group in an unrelated race discrimination and retaliation case brought by a former employee. SHRM has appealed that decision.
Two liability findings in less than a year is a rough stretch for any employer. It is a sharper problem for the group that markets itself as the standard-setter for human resources.
Business Insider had already reported, in the prior year, that SHRM was dealing with internal controversies. Those included an attendance policy that penalized workers who arrived a minute after 9 a.m., a dress-code memo described as banning sequins, and a companywide meeting in which CEO Johnny C. Taylor described some staffers as "entitled," "complacent," and "sloppy."
None of that background decided the Torres case. The jury’s job was narrower: whether SHRM met its duties under the ADA and Virginia law when it pulled a job offer tied to a service-dog request. The panel said it did not.
Compensatory damages of $400,000 are real money. They are also far below the earlier $11.5 million figure in the separate discrimination case. Jurors declined to add punitive damages, which are meant to punish and deter, not only to compensate.
SHRM says it will evaluate every appellate option. Torres’s counsel says the lesson is simple: employers have to take the employee’s actual medical needs seriously, and that rule does not carve out the industry’s own trade group.
The core conflict the jury heard remains the one employers argue about every week. One side says a service animal was medically necessary and more reliable than devices alone. The other side says it offered practical medical accommodations and should not be forced to accept the exact ask an applicant prefers.
Federal disability law requires a good-faith exchange, not automatic surrender. It also requires employers to look hard at real limitations and real workplace needs. In Alexandria, twelve jurors decided SHRM’s version of that exchange was not enough.
A legal filing tied to the verdict was posted the following Tuesday. Specific calendar dates for the verdict and the filing were not spelled out beyond those relative markers, and the public reporting did not include a full docket number or the court’s formal case caption.
What was clear is the bottom line: the largest HR association in the country lost on all counts, owes $400,000 in compensatory damages, and is already talking about appellate review and nationwide precedent.
Groups that sell workplace wisdom to everyone else do not get a free pass when a jury finds they failed the basic rules themselves.