Disability Discrimination and Wrongful Termination 

Disability discrimination and failure to accommodate a disability are some of the most common claim that support wrongful termination cases, filed in California. And FEHA, an employer who employs five or more employees has an obligation to engage in the interactive process and reasonably accommodated an employee with a qualifying disability. It is also specifically prohibited by law to discriminated against workers with disability in terms, conditions and privileges of employment. 

The most common scenarios of employers violating disability laws and wrongfully terminating disabled employees are: 

• Terminating an employee who has a serious medical condition once their FMLA leave is exhausted without considering whether that employee can be entitled to further leave as an accommodation to his disability.   
• Hiring another employee in place of a disabled employee who is on leave, and then failing to rehire the disabled worker to one of the vacant positions for which that employee arguably qualifies upon his partial or full release from disability leave. 
• Assuming that terminating an employee with a certain condition is legal because that condition is not a disability, when in fact it is. The definition of workplace disability in California is board and it includes both physical conditions, such as diabetes, high blood pressure, carpal tunnel, and ulcer as well as mental conditions, such as depression, PTSD, OCD, Bi-Polar Disorder, and various sleeping disorders such as Sleep Apnea, among other conditions. 
• Claiming that accommodating a particular disability would be an "undue hardship" on the business operations, and therefore terminating a disabled employee due to "business necessity" without realizing that proving that there was in fact such necessity and hardship is the employer's job, and it's quite a difficult task in court, since the employer bears the heavy burden of proving that the accommodation could not have been reasonably provided.   
• Not allowing an employee sufficient time to provide the necessarily medical paperwork to substantiate his disability and need for medical leave or another accommodation, and rushing to terminate him. Some employer love to order a disabled employee to provide a medical note within three days or face termination. We all know how long often takes to see a doctor, so this kind of deadline is unreasonable and can also be grounds for proving a wrongful termination.   
• Assuming that an employee is on "personal" leave when it's clear from an employee's communications and documents that he or she is does not report to work due to serious illness, even if complete information about that illness was not provided immediately. 
• Terminating an employee for supposedly having performance issues shortly after that employees requests accommodations or goes on / returns from medical leave to avoid future "headaches" or dealing with that employee's disability issues. 

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