Demand-Responsive Seating: A Proof-and-Implementation Architecture for Enforceable Seating Rights

Prolonged stationary standing in retail, grocery, pharmacy, and food-service work is associated with lower-back and lower-limb discomfort, fatigue, swelling, and venous risk. The United States has no general federal suitable-seating rule, and state and local protections are uneven. Several states already grant an inactive-duty seating entitlement, suggesting that the policy problem concerns not only substantive rights but also proof and enforcement. This working paper proposes a Hybrid Demand-Responsive Seating Standard (H-DRSS) for prospective testing through a time-limited state or legally authorized municipal pilot. H-DRSS combines three layers: (1) a baseline task-compatible suitable-seating right; (2) a demand-responsive proof rule under which a defined service lull at a service-linked workstation creates a rebuttable presumption that standing is unnecessary and shifts a contemporaneous, task-specific rebuttal burden to the employer; and (3) a posture-variation safeguard for prolonged stationary work where no qualifying lull occurs. The paper's claimed contribution is a proof-and-implementation architecture rather than a new substantive right to sit. It distinguishes evidence of entitlement from evidence of compliance, regulates seat availability and permission rather than actual worker posture, provides a no-technology compliance pathway, and incorporates privacy, anti-retaliation, anti-gaming, exception, and administrative-verification safeguards. The proposal is not presented as a validated intervention. The five-minute low-demand trigger, 40-minute evaluation flag, decision thresholds, service effects, implementation costs, and administrative feasibility remain pilot hypotheses or governance parameters. The proposed evaluation therefore uses prospective threshold calibration, cluster-aware power analysis, a stepped-wedge or matched comparison design, structured observation, layer-attribution analysis, and predeclared advance/revise/stop criteria. A first-order empirical question is whether qualifying service lulls occur frequently enough for the Layer 2 proof rule to have a meaningful operational domain.