California Disability Discrimination Lawyer

Disability Discrimination

Representing California Workers With Disabilities and Medical Conditions

Most disability cases don't start with cruelty - they start with an employer that treats a medical reality as a staffing problem. The accommodation request that vanishes into HR. The "we need someone reliable" comment after a diagnosis. The termination that arrives, remarkably, the week after the doctor's note. FEHA covers physical and mental disabilities, chronic and episodic conditions, and medical conditions including cancer history - and it applies the moment a condition limits a major life activity, a broader test than the federal ADA's.

The Interactive Process Is Where Cases Are Won and Lost

When you request accommodation - or your employer simply knows you need one - California requires a timely, good-faith interactive process: an actual back-and-forth about what would let you do the job. Modified schedules, remote work where feasible, equipment, reassignment of marginal tasks, leave as an accommodation, transfer to an open position. An employer that skips the conversation, slow-walks it, or offers only take-leave-or-quit has violated FEHA even before any firing. Document every step: request in writing, note every response and silence, keep the doctor's notes you provided.

What Employers Get Wrong, Again and Again

Treating leave as the only accommodation when a schedule change would work. Demanding total medical files when the law entitles them only to functional limitations. "100% healed" policies - requiring full recovery before return - which are unlawful because they refuse the individualized assessment FEHA demands. Punishing attendance protected by accommodation. And the mental-health double standard: anxiety, depression, and PTSD are covered conditions, not character flaws, and "stress isn't a real disability" is a sentence that wins cases for our side.

Proving It

The timeline does the heavy lifting: diagnosis or disclosure, request, employer response, adverse action. Add comparators (who else got flexibility?), the paper trail (reviews before versus after disclosure), and the interactive-process record - or the absence of one. For the statewide legal deep-dive, our California disability discrimination guide covers the statutes section by section.

Remedies and Deadlines

Lost pay and benefits, front pay, emotional distress, punitive damages for knowing violations, accommodation orders, and attorney's fees under FEHA - contingency, no fee unless we win. Three years to file with the Civil Rights Department, one year to sue after a right-to-sue notice, 300 days on the federal track, six months for public-employer claim notices. If an accommodation request is pending or just got denied, that is exactly the moment to call: 1-800-371-3088.