The definition of a disability has been expanded to the point where almost anything can be considered. Unfortunately for one woman, even she couldn’t get past a California court with the story she was trying to pitch.
Michaelin Higgins-Williams was a clinical assistant at Sutter Medical Foundation. Approximately three years into her employment, she visited her doctor complaining about stress. Higgins-Williams claimed that this “stress” was caused by interaction she had with her manager and the foundation’s human resources team. She was diagnosed with adjustment disorder with anxiety.
Due to this diagnosis, Sutter granted Higgins-Williams a stress/disability-related leave of absence under California’s Moore-Brown-Roberti Family Rights Act and the FMLA. Once her leave was over, Higgins-Williams returned to work.
Shortly after returning to her job, she received a negative performance evaluation from her manager. At this point, Higgins-Williams claimed that her manager was singling her out.
One month into her return, Higgins-Williams requested additional time off as an accommodation for her disability. Sutter Medical Foundation approved her request and granted her additional leave.
Right before she was scheduled to return to work, her doctor submitted a status report to Sutter that said Higgins-Williams needed to be transferred into another department and be under the supervision of another authority. The doctor also requested additional leave for Higgins-Williams, which again was granted.
Two months after this request, Higgins-Williams’ doctor requested an additional month of leave and also requested that following the additional leave Higgins-Williams be put in a lighter duty position. It was at this point that Sutter informed their employee that her doctor hadn’t provided any kind of information as to when she would be able to return to her position. Her doctor had also neglected to provide information proving additional leave time would help her return to work. Sutter Medical informed Higgins-Williams that without either of those documents she would be terminated. The doctor failed to provide these pieces of information and Higgins-Williams was fired.
Higgins-Williams sued claiming disability discrimination, failure to engage the interactive process and failure to provide reasonable accommodation under California’s Fair Employment and Housing Act, or FEHA. In order for Higgins-Williams to even have a case, it needed to be determined by the court if she was even really considered disabled. The court said:
“An employee’s inability to work under a particular supervisor because of anxiety and stress related to the supervisor’s standard oversight of the employee’s job performance does not constitute a disability under FEHA.”
Eventually the court found that Higgins-Williams was treated fairly by her employer who complied multiple times. She was also fully capable of performing the duties of her job since she wasn’t plagued by anything that would prevent this. This is considered a huge win for human resource departments because it proves that complying with standards and procedures could help the company come out on top.
