Disabled Employees & Accommodation
You asked for something small — time to recover from surgery, a modified schedule, remote days, a quieter space — and got silence, a form, or a flat "no." Or you disclosed a diagnosis, and the clean reviews stopped. The FEHA — the Fair Employment and Housing Act — is blunt about this: an employer must accommodate a disability it knows about, and it must sit down with you in good faith to work out how. The law doesn't ask whether your employer feels like trying; it says they have to. This is the work I most want to be known for.
Back injury or ADHD, chemo or PTSD — the file that lands on my desk tends to read the same way:
Write-ups that only start after the disclosure aren't a coincidence. They're a timeline, and a timeline is usually what wins these cases.
The FEHA, the Fair Employment and Housing Act — disability falls under that — comes down to three duties. Your employer may not punish you for having a disability. They owe you a reasonable accommodation — a change that lets you do your job. And they owe you a real, good-faith back-and-forth to figure out what that change is. That conversation has a name, the "interactive process," and skipping it is its own violation — even if it later turns out nothing would have worked. A reasonable accommodation can be almost anything that helps: a modified or part-time schedule, time off to recover, remote work, an ergonomic change or a physical change to the workplace, a reassignment, or a quieter space and clearer instructions.
And "disability" is far broader than most people think, especially in California. It covers the obvious — an injury, surgery you're recovering from, cancer, diabetes, chronic pain. It covers the less visible just as fully: mental-health conditions like anxiety, depression, and PTSD, and neurodivergence like autism and ADHD. It even protects you from being treated worse because someone you care for is disabled. California law asks only whether a condition limits a major life activity — not whether it severely disables you. You do not have to be "disabled enough."
Most of these situations don't begin with a lawyer or a diagnosis on a form. They begin with a bad year. You get sick. You need surgery. An old injury flares, or a chronic condition gets worse — or you're stretched thin caring for someone you love who is disabled. You do the responsible thing and ask for a little room to get through it. Then the request sits for three weeks. The next review — the first lukewarm one in years — mentions "reliability." Your absences start getting counted in a way they never were before. Nobody says anything out loud; the file just starts moving in one direction. That's the moment most of these cases are born — an employer converting a medical need into a performance problem, one small entry at a time.
The law protects your mind the same way it protects your body. Plenty of employers still don't act like it. The pattern usually matches the one you'd see with a physical condition, just harder to spot. Someone copes and performs, sometimes for years, then discloses a condition or asks for one small change: a quieter space, some flexibility, clearer expectations, a little understanding. Then the story flips. Now they're "difficult," or "not a fit," or a "performance problem," and the change that would have cost almost nothing gets refused. The disclosure itself becomes the evidence used against them.
Anxiety, depression, PTSD, autism, ADHD — the law covers these like any other disability. The accommodations are usually simple and cheap, so when one gets refused, the reason is rarely cost; it's discomfort, or bias. And when asking for what you needed is what got you targeted, that's a case.
Once your employer knows a medical condition needs a change, the duty to engage is theirs — a genuine back-and-forth, both sides in good faith, adjusted as things change. What too many people get instead: a form that vanishes into a void. A "we'll look into it" that never comes back. A flat denial with no discussion. An "accommodation" the employer picked on its own that doesn't actually help. It happens with a lifting restriction and a modified schedule just as often as with a request to work from home or a quieter desk. When the employer stops engaging — ignores the request, drags it out, decides for you — the law puts that breakdown on them. Refusing to have the conversation isn't a technicality. It is the violation.
The defense in these cases is almost always some version of ignorance. "We didn't know it was a disability." "We thought it was an attitude problem." "The doctor's note never said what she needed." Which is why the whole game is what they knew — who knew, how they knew, and when. The email where you mentioned the diagnosis. The date on the doctor's note. The manager who joked about your "sick days." Those entries beat a stack of after-the-fact explanations, because they're dated — and they're discoverable.
That is my part of it: pinning down what they knew and when they knew it, and holding the record up next to the story they tell later.
A dated entry beats an after-the-fact explanation every time. Start making yours:
None of it has to be done flawlessly — early beats flawless. When you're ready to send what you saved, here is exactly how to prepare it.
Know your rights
Recent development: a May 2026 Court of Appeal decision, Husband v. Target, underscores why putting your employer on notice matters — erratic behavior alone usually isn't enough to trigger the duty to accommodate. (Last reviewed July 31, 2026.)
More than most people expect. Injuries, surgeries you're recovering from, chronic illnesses, cancer, diabetes, chronic pain — and, just as fully, mental-health conditions and neurodivergence like anxiety, depression, PTSD, autism, and ADHD. California asks only whether the condition limits a major life activity. That's a lower bar than federal law.
Sometimes, yes. California law also protects you from being treated worse because of your association with a person who has a disability — for example, because you care for a disabled child, parent, or spouse.
Not necessarily. What matters is whether your condition limits a major life activity. Documentation helps, and I'll tell you what's worth getting, but you don't have to have everything figured out before we talk.
No magic words are required. You have to have let your employer know, in some way, that you needed a change for a health or medical reason. Once they're on notice, the duty to actually talk with you is theirs.
Not on its own. You're protected if you can do the essential functions of the job with a reasonable accommodation. Figuring out whether one exists is the whole point of the conversation they were supposed to have with you.
It's not supposed to, and the law forbids punishing you for asking. If requesting what you needed is the very thing that got you targeted, that's not a reason to stay quiet — that's the case.
If you asked for what you needed and it was held against you, let's talk. The first conversation is free and confidential. There's no cost unless we win.