A district court erred when it dismissed a disability discrimination lawsuit brought by the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, the 10th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals held Friday, ruling that EEOC could reasonably show that a former store employee faced discrimination despite being unable to relay an exact diagnosis.
The employee in EEOC v. A&A Appliance, Inc. claimed that her employer failed to accommodate her disability in violation of the Americans with Disabilities Act. Per the court, the employee requested leave from work to care for her son, who was sick with pneumonia, in March 2020. She later reported to an HR representative that she had also become sick, which necessitated multiple emergency room visits.
A&A Appliance granted the plaintiff 12 weeks of leave under the Family and Medical Leave Act. However, as her return date in June 2020 approached, the employee continued to report feeling ill and unable to work and inquired about an extension. A&A Appliance reiterated the employee’s expected return date but also offered the choice to resign. The employee did not respond and was later terminated.
The employee filed a charge with EEOC, which brought the lawsuit on her behalf. A district court held against the agency, finding that EEOC did not show that the employee notified A&A Appliance of a disability or that she requested a plausibly reasonable accommodation.
But the 10th Circuit reversed, finding that a reasonable jury could determine that the employee had informed her employer of her disability and that her leave request was reasonable.
The court determined that the employee had sent several emails and text messages to HR staff describing her symptoms, provided a doctor’s note and had even held a phone call with the HR representative describing her work limitations. On the latter point, it said that the company’s own phone records confirmed that a five-minute call took place, despite the HR representative’s testimony that she did not recall speaking to the employee on the day in question.
The district court had held that the employee’s failure to provide A&A Appliance with a formal diagnosis — at the time, the employee was unsure whether she had COVID-19, vocal cord paralysis or gastritis — meant that the company could not have been on notice of her having a disability.
Conversely, the 10th Circuit noted that a formal diagnosis is not necessary in this context. Instead, the inquiry turns on whether an employer knows enough about an employee’s condition to conclude that a disability exists.
Though the employee’s medical team would determine after her termination that she did not have a gastrointestinal disorder, A&A Appliance directly acknowledged this possibility in its termination letter to the employee. This fact “could support a jury determination that [A&A Appliance] indeed knew [the employee] had an ongoing disability and was not simply feeling unwell,” the 10th Circuit said.
Additionally, the court found that the employee’s request to return to work “a few weeks later” in order for her doctor to determine the cause of her symptoms could be seen as a reasonable accommodation. It further noted that nothing the employee communicated to A&A Appliance suggested that she expected the results of testing to show that she had a condition requiring more than a few weeks of treatment.
The decision demonstrates the complexity surrounding the intersection of the FMLA and ADA. Federal courts and EEOC have long noted that the ADA may permit an accommodation in the form of additional leave for employees who exhaust the FMLA’s 12-week entitlement.
In 2022, for instance, EEOC announced a $65,000 settlement in a case involving employees who, it alleged, were fired after they could not return to work due to their disabilities following the end of their FMLA leave. The employees in question had asked for additional leave of one and three weeks, respectively.
Not all such requests are considered reasonable, however. In a 2025 decision, the 4th Circuit clarified that a request for disability leave until “September or October” was not specific enough to render a requested leave extension reasonable.
