diff --git a/CHANGELOG.md b/CHANGELOG.md
index 84e03c9..42f8850 100644
--- a/CHANGELOG.md
+++ b/CHANGELOG.md
@@ -1,5 +1,7 @@
 ## CHARLIE development version
 
+- Fix bug where CHARLIE was falsely throwing a file permissions error for tempdir values containing bash variables. (#118, @kelly-sovacool)
+
 ## CHARLIE 0.11.0
 
 - Major updates to convert CHARLIE from a biowulf-specific to a platform-agnostic pipeline (#102, @kelly-sovacool):
diff --git a/workflow/rules/init.smk b/workflow/rules/init.smk
index 9aea06c..380271a 100644
--- a/workflow/rules/init.smk
+++ b/workflow/rules/init.smk
@@ -87,8 +87,6 @@ def _convert_to_int(variable):
 # resource absolute path
 WORKDIR = config["workdir"]
 TEMPDIR = config["tempdir"]
-if not os.access(TEMPDIR, os.W_OK):
-    raise PermissionError(f"TEMPDIR {TEMPDIR} cannot be written to.\n\tHint: does the path exist and do you have write permissions?")
 
 SCRIPTS_DIR = config["scriptsdir"]
 RESOURCES_DIR = config["resourcesdir"]