Your leave ran out. Then they let you go.

California defines disability more broadly than federal law. FEHA asks whether a condition limits a major life activity, not whether it substantially limits one, and episodic conditions are assessed as if active. People who do not qualify under federal law often qualify here.

Three duties sit in Government Code §12940, and an employer can violate any of them:

• §12940(a), no adverse action because of a disability.
• §12940(m): provide reasonable accommodation for a known disability, absent undue hardship.
• §12940(n): engage in a timely, good-faith interactive process. A standalone obligation: an employer can be liable for refusing to have the conversation at all.

Reasonable accommodation: a change to a job, schedule, equipment, or workplace that lets a qualified employee perform the essential functions of the position: the core duties the job exists to accomplish. Examples: modified schedules, leave, ergonomic equipment, remote work where the role permits, reassignment to a vacant position. More terms in the glossary.

Leave as an accommodation. This is the piece most employers miss. A finite leave with a reasonable expectation of return is a recognized accommodation under FEHA, separate from any statutory entitlement and capable of extending past it. What the law does not require is indefinite leave.

Undue hardship is demanding: significant difficulty or expense measured against the employer’s size, resources, and operations. Inconvenience does not meet it.

Your CFRA leave ended and HR sent a letter terminating you because leave was exhausted. Nobody raised an extension, modified duties, or an open role, and that absence may itself be the violation.

Your doctor released you with a 20-pound lifting restriction, and you were told to come back only when you are “100 percent.” Employers may not condition return on being fully healed where an accommodation would let you perform the essential functions.

You asked for a later start time to manage treatment and heard nothing for six weeks. The delay is itself a failure of the process.

You disclosed a condition and were moved off your accounts “for your own good.” That is not an accommodation.

Interactive process: the required back-and-forth between employer and employee to identify a workable accommodation. Under FEHA and 2 CCR §11069 it must be timely, in good faith, and ongoing.

1. Trigger. You request a change, or the employer otherwise learns of a disability and a need. A doctor’s note or a conversation with a supervisor is enough.
2. Prompt start. The employer must open the discussion within a reasonable time; silence is not a neutral answer.
3. Information. It may ask for documentation of your functional limitations, not your medical file.
4. Options. Both sides consider possibilities. You need not propose the perfect fix, and the employer need not grant your preferred one if another effective accommodation exists.
5. Reassignment. If nothing works in your current role, FEHA requires considering a vacant position you are qualified to perform.
6. Revisit. The process is ongoing, not a single meeting; it restarts when your restrictions change.

Eligibility and deadlines depend on the facts of your situation. Do not rely on this page to calculate yours. FEHA’s accommodation duty can apply even where none of these leave laws does.

These cases turn on the paper trail of a conversation, or its absence.

Put the request in writing. Even a short email confirming a conversation fixes the date the employer knew. No magic words are required. You never have to say “reasonable accommodation.”

Keep the medical documentation you provided, and the date. Restrictions matter more than diagnoses.

Save the employer’s responses, including the ones that never came. A six-week silence is evidence.

Track the timeline: request, response, meeting, termination letter. Note open positions posted while you were told nothing was available.

Ask before you sign: separation documents presented at the end of a leave often release exactly these claims. See severance agreements.

This describes how California law generally works, not your circumstances.

Where a disability, accommodation, or leave claim succeeds, California employees may recover lost wages and benefits, emotional distress damages, reinstatement or front pay in some circumstances, and attorney’s fees and costs. Punitive damages are possible where the conduct meets the standard for malice, oppression, or fraud.

Failure to engage in the interactive process is its own claim, and so is retaliation for asking for an accommodation: see retaliation. Value depends on the evidence and the employer’s conduct. Nothing can be promised.

Taylor DeRosa has practiced employee-side employment litigation for nearly a decade, most of it at Rizio Lipinsky Heiting, PC, where he trained under experienced trial lawyers. He is recognized in Best Lawyers: Ones to Watch® in America, Labor and Employment Law – Employee, every year since 2024.

We are one attorney by design, which matters in accommodation cases, where a single email exchange can decide the outcome. That exchange gets read by the person who would put it in front of a jury, not by someone summarizing it for him.

A FEHA disability, accommodation, or leave claim typically starts with a California Civil Rights Department complaint, which is filed online rather than in person. If the matter is litigated, cases from this region are generally filed in Orange County Superior Court in Santa Ana, or in Los Angeles, San Bernardino, or Riverside Superior Court where the employer sits there, with federal ADA claims heard in the Central District of California in Santa Ana or Riverside.

We represent employees across Orange County, Los Angeles County, and the Inland Empire, including Irvine, Anaheim, Ontario, and Riverside.