A teacher with heart disease claims she was told she could no longer teach at a distance. Now she is filing a complaint.

A professor with heart and lung problems who cannot get a Covid-19 vaccine is suing her university, arguing that by forcing her to work on campus rather than remotely, her employer has raped the Americans with Disabilities Act.

Dr Elizabeth Kostal, 48, associate professor of nursing and health sciences and academic program director in the Department of Public Health and Health Sciences at Southern University at Virginia Beach, has a pacemaker. She said she had barely left her home since the start of the pandemic due to the high risk of complications from the coronavirus.

She is not eligible to be vaccinated against Covid-19 because she has had allergic reactions to previous vaccines, including myocarditis, inflammation of the heart muscle.

The Kostal campus closed when the pandemic began. She taught at home, lecturing to students without fear of meeting someone on campus who had Covid-19.

But in the spring, despite the fact that most of the students were still totally distant, Kostal says his university ordered employees to return to their offices.

She asked to continue working from home and submitted medical documents with her request, according to a legal file submitted by her lawyers on Sunday, but was told there would be no exceptions to the return policy on the campus.

In response to her request, Kostal claims, the human resources department told her that she had not “indicated a disability compatible with an approval for remote working conditions”, despite the fact that she suffers from asthma and chronic heart problems.

So in April, Kostal said, she put on two masks and walked to her office, inside a building where she would not be interacting with her own students, but where medical students have passed. nurses who have come into potential contact with Covid-19 patients.

“I was literally undergoing an astronomical risk that could end my life by opening my laptop in my office to teach live and remotely to teach my students who were at home,” Kostal said in an exclusive interview at NBC News. “It is an incredulous position to be placed by an employer.”

Kostal’s lawyers filed a complaint on his behalf on Sunday with the United States Equal Employment Opportunity Commission in anticipation of a federal class action lawsuit against all Southern University employees who requested and were denied accommodations related to Covid-19.

It is not known how many other University of the South employees have requested such accommodations, but Kostal’s lawyers, who shared the complaint with NBC News before filing it, claim that the school’s refusal Granting anyone the opportunity to work from home is a violation of the Americans with Disabilities Act, which prohibits discrimination against people with documented disabilities in several areas, including employment.

“Putting aside the reasons why Dr Kostal is so capable of working from home and being successful, you can’t just make a big decision for everyone. The Americans with Disabilities Act requires individualized determination, ”said Christine Hogan, partner at Wigdor LLP in New York, the law firm representing Kostal.

Kostal’s various medical conditions meet the legal definition of a disability, Hogan said, and allowing him to continue working from home would not create undue hardship for the University of the South. According to Hogan, this means that the university has no legal basis for not granting Kostal or anyone with a justified need to work from home such accommodation.

To complicate Kostal’s situation, Hogan said, his medical conditions also limit his ability to wear masks and lecture at the same time. Unlike people with a healthy heart, Kostal becomes dizzy and dizzy.

The solution to this problem is simple, his lawyer said.

“The housing that would solve the problem is telecommuting – working from home so that she doesn’t have to wear a mask during her classes,” Hogan said.

But the University of the South, which did not return several NBC News inquiries regarding Kostal’s case before the complaint was filed, did not appear open to it, according to the legal file.

For five weeks, Kostal worked from her office, fearing for her life every time she entered.

“I have to constantly make this decision in my head and think about these parameters. Is my physical health better or my financial health? she said.

It was only after being contacted by her lawyers that the University of the South agreed to temporarily allow Kostal to work remotely again, informing her that the deal would be reassessed every 30 days. The work-from-home arrangement remains temporary, with the university indicating that it would like Kostal to return to campus at some point.

Kostal hopes that by taking legal action, no one else will have to go through similar employment battles besides the fear they already live with while feeling particularly vulnerable during the pandemic.

“This whole experience has been terrifying,” she said. “I shouldn’t have to fight so hard to save my life.”