Are people suing employers to keep working at home?

The Wall Street Journal says more and more workers are filing discrimination complaints if their company won't let them work from home:

The number of charges filed to the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission alleging discrimination against individuals with anxiety, depression and post-traumatic stress disorder rose by at least 16% for each condition from 2021 to 2022.

....“Mental illness is at an all-time high, and Covid was a huge contributor,” said Hannah Olson, whose software firm, Disclo, helps employers manage the disability-accommodations process. “The other piece is return-to-office. People are asking for more things, and companies don’t know how to manage this.”

The EEOC in September sued a Georgia employer for declining to allow a digital marketing manager with anxiety and other mental-health disorders to work remotely three days a week.... With remote-work requests, “there’s a fine line between ‘I want it because it makes me happy,’ and ‘I want it because if I don’t get it I’ll be depressed or anxious,’” said Patty Pryor, a Jackson Lewis attorney who represents employers.

As happens so often with the Journal, the evidence supporting their central claim is spotty. There are more disability claims these days, they say, but "agencies don’t disclose the events leading to the charges." So we don't know if this has anything to do with remote work requests. The article is based solely on anecdotal reports from "lawyers, government officials and disability advocates."

Naturally I've taken the liberty of digging up some relevant numbers:

The top chart shows mental health discrimination claims filed with the EEOC. They've been going up steadily for two decades, and nothing special happened after COVID started. There is a bit of an uptick in 2022, but only anxiety is above its trendline—and even there only by a little bit. And note that these are all mental health claims. At most, only a tiny fraction are due to remote work complaints.

The bottom chart is less useful: it shows Social Security disability claims for all causes. However, if mental health claims have been rising you'd expect at least a small increase in total claims. But there isn't one. Absolutely nothing has changed from before to after the pandemic.

So color me skeptical. There may indeed be some discrimination filings based on remote work demands, but the numbers must be very small indeed. It's a dramatic claim, but the numbers really don't back it up.