Q: My employer wants me to come back to work after I have worked at home for over two years. Can I refuse with cause?

A: Unfortunately, prior arrangements, prior agreements and a ten year seniority provide you with legal basis for working from home. Generally, an employer can require employees to work wherever the employer wants them to work. The only real exception to that general rule is if the employee has a right to a reasonable accommodation under the California Fair Employment and Housing Act or the federal Americans With Disabilities Act.

The best way to qualify for protection under those statutes, you should provide your employer with a medical note indicating you have restrictions on your ability to work, or restrictions based on the medical needs of a close family member, and that those restrictions could be accommodated by allowing you to work from home. Once such a medical note is provided to the employer, it has the affirmative legal obligation to provide the reasonable accommodation unless doing so would create an undue hardship on the employer. Given that the company has been allowing you to work from home for years, it would likely be very hard for the employer to argue undue hardship.

The problem you will have is getting a doctor to give you a note to bring to your employer indicating the need for you to avoid the workplace due to Covid. Many doctors are not willing to take you off work simply because Covid is out there. Under OSHA regulations employers are required to take painstaking efforts to make the workplace safe, and under those conditions the risk is low enough that many doctors are not willing to write off work notes. Even more so if you are not in a job where you deal face-to-face with the public, like in retail.

Good luck to you.