Many employees make deliberate decisions to withhold medical conditions or diagnoses from their employers. However, those conditions may flare up in the workplace. Under such circumstances, are employers expected to know that the employee has a disability, based solely on observation? A recent California decision affirms that an employer’s “knowledge” of the disability will be inferred when the disability is “the only reasonable interpretation of the known facts.”
Quick Background: Obligations To Accommodate Disabilities
The Fair Employment and Housing Act (“FEHA”) requires that employers make reasonable accommodations for a physical or mental disability and engage in a timely, good faith, interactive process with the disabled employee to determine effective reasonable accommodations. California law has long held that an employer cannot be liable for violating FEHA’s disability provisions unless it knows of that disability. (Avila v. Continental Airlines, Inc. (2008) 165 Cal.App.4th 1327, 1247.), including when (1) an employee notifies the employer of a physical or mental disability, (2) if the employer learns of the disability through a third-party, or (3) if the employee becomes aware of the condition through observation. In Husband v. Target Corp. (“Husband”), the Court of Appeal recently addressed this third situation – at what point has an employer learned of a disability through observation, therefore triggering the employer’s interactive process obligations under FEHA?
Employers’ Obligations Are Triggered When Observations Objectively Reveal That A Disability Is The Only Reasonable Inference
In Husband, a Target employee suffering from bipolar disorder chose not to inform his employer of his bipolar condition or any potential restrictions. He worked for 20 months without any negative incident. Thereafter, he suffered from two apparent incidents a month apart. The first was when he entered the store as a customer and became upset at another employee, allegedly using profanity. The second incident was during his scheduled shift when he came to work looking “very deflated” and “suddenly got angry,” while recounting self-harm and concerns that the inventory orders “were themselves ‘laughing at him.’” This behavior was out of the ordinary for the employee and when asked what the manager could do to help, the employee stated he wanted to go home, which was granted. The next day the employee returned for his shift and made statements “that he thought he ‘killed’ his stepmom by speaking a word” and then asked the manager and others if he had killed anyone at the Target store. The manager felt the employee needed help and recommended he be examined by a doctor/psych professional. Later that same day, Target made the decision to terminate the employee for violating its workplace violence policy. Plaintiff sued, claiming that Target was discriminating against his bipolar disorder disability and had failed to accommodate him. The trial court granted summary judgment, finding that Target had no knowledge of the employee’s disability when it decided to terminate him and that no accommodation was necessary since the employee never disclosed he suffered from a mental disability.
The Court of Appeal affirmed. The Court ruled that where knowledge of a disability is asserted based solely on observation, knowledge will only be inferred “when the fact of disability is the only reasonable interpretation of the known facts.” The Court affirmed that while one interpretation of the employee’s actions was a mental disability, another reasonable interpretation was that the employee suffered a “side effect of ingesting illegal substances or a combination of prescribed medications or a manifestation of sleep deprivation.” The Court rejected the notion that the manager’s subjective opinion regarding employee treatment from a hospital altered the analysis. Rather, the standard is an objective one based on the facts, not a subjective opinion from an untrained co-worker. Since other reasonable interpretations of the employee’s actions appeared from the facts, the law did not impute knowledge of the disability to the employer.
Practical Takeaway:
Husband is a firm reminder that there are limits to the extent an employer can be found to have had “knowledge” of an employee’s disability. Employers are not expected to be clairvoyant or able to immediately recognize potential underlying mental health disorders. This decision shows that an employer can act with well-meaning intentions, such as excusing an employee from work, suggesting the employee obtain treatment, or recommending the employee go to the hospital, without triggering a legal duty under FEHA. Employers should be able to act in the employee’s best interests, without the fear that doing so will subject them to liability. This decision demonstrates that employers should document all unusual encounters with employees to keep a written record of what the employer knew in relation to any decision it makes.