Most Maryland employees who have been fired in connection with a disability think about it as a termination case from the beginning. Many of those cases, when examined carefully, reveal that the termination was the final step in a longer sequence that began with an accommodation request the employer did not want to engage with. Wrongful termination lawyers in Maryland who handle ADA and MFEPA cases regularly see the same arc: an employee requests an adjustment, the employer either ignores it or provides a nominal response, the employee’s ability to perform deteriorates without the needed accommodation, and the employer then fires them based on the very performance failures that the unaccommodated disability caused. The termination looks legitimate on paper. The paper trail was built on a failure to accommodate that violated the law before the termination ever occurred.
Understanding the accommodation obligation, the interactive process that must accompany it, and the ways employers engineer post-accommodation failure is essential for evaluating whether a termination connected to a disability was lawful. Maryland law, through both the ADA and the MFEPA, creates real and enforceable accommodation rights. The failure to honor those rights is actionable independently of whatever followed from it.
What Qualifies as a Disability Under the ADA and the MFEPA
The ADA Amendments Act of 2008 significantly broadened the definition of disability under federal law. Prior to the Amendments Act, courts had interpreted the ADA’s definition narrowly, excluding conditions that were episodic, in remission, or correctable with medication. The Amendments Act rejected those interpretations and directed courts to construe the definition broadly in favor of coverage.
A disability under the ADA is a physical or mental impairment that substantially limits one or more major life activities, a record of such an impairment, or being regarded as having such an impairment. Major life activities include not only obvious physical functions like walking, seeing, and hearing, but also thinking, concentrating, communicating, interacting with others, and the operation of major bodily systems such as the immune, neurological, and endocrine systems. A condition that is episodic or in remission qualifies if it would substantially limit a major life activity when active. This means that conditions like epilepsy, depression, cancer in remission, diabetes, and multiple sclerosis are generally covered even when the employee is functioning normally at the time of the accommodation request.
The MFEPA’s definition of disability tracks the ADA’s with similar breadth. Maryland employees have both federal and state law protections, and claims can be pursued through both the EEOC and the MCCR. The MCCR’s 180-day filing deadline applies to MFEPA disability claims just as it does to race and other discrimination claims.
The Employer’s Accommodation Obligation and the Interactive Process
The ADA requires covered employers to provide reasonable accommodations to qualified employees with disabilities unless doing so would impose an undue hardship on the business. A qualified employee is one who can perform the essential functions of the position with or without an accommodation. The undue hardship defense requires the employer to demonstrate that the accommodation would cause significant difficulty or expense given the employer’s resources and operations. Courts interpret undue hardship narrowly, and small inconvenience or modest expense does not qualify.
What the ADA requires beyond simply providing an accommodation is an interactive process. When an employee requests an accommodation, the employer has an obligation to engage in a good-faith, interactive dialogue to explore what accommodations are available, what the employee’s functional limitations are, and what adjustments would allow the employee to perform essential functions. An employer who receives an accommodation request and either ignores it, denies it without any discussion, or offers only an accommodation the employer finds convenient without considering the employee’s actual needs has failed the interactive process obligation.
The interactive process failure is itself an independent ADA violation, separate from whether the employer’s ultimate accommodation decision was reasonable. An employer who does not engage at all with an accommodation request cannot later argue that an appropriate accommodation did not exist when they never investigated whether one was available. Courts have consistently held that abandoning the interactive process shifts responsibility to the employer for any resulting breakdown in the accommodation.
How Employers Engineer Performance Failures After Accommodation Requests
The manufactured pretext pattern in disability discrimination cases has a specific structure that employment attorneys recognize. An employee requests an accommodation. The employer either denies it or provides something insufficient. Without the accommodation, the employee struggles with the aspect of the job that the disability limits. The employer documents those struggles as performance failures without acknowledging the connection to the unaccommodated disability. The documentation accumulates until the employer has what appears to be a performance-based justification for termination. The employee is fired.
A concrete example from Maryland’s healthcare and government contracting sectors, where this pattern appears with regularity: a case manager with a back condition requests a modified workstation or reduced lifting requirements. The employer says the request is under review. No modification is made. The employee, in pain during long shifts, begins arriving late and leaving early for medical appointments. The employer writes up the attendance issues without acknowledging the medical context. The employee is terminated for attendance and performance after three months. The employer points to the documented issues. The employee’s attorney points to the accommodation request that preceded all of them and was never addressed.
The connection between the unaccommodated disability and the performance failures is the causal link that makes these cases actionable. Establishing it requires documentation of the accommodation request, evidence that the documented performance issues were a direct consequence of the unaccommodated limitation, and proof that the employer knew or should have known the connection.
Mental Health Accommodations: A Category Employers Frequently Mishandle
Mental health conditions covered under the ADA, including depression, anxiety, PTSD, bipolar disorder, and OCD, are among the most frequently mishandled categories in accommodation cases. Employers in Maryland’s government, healthcare, and professional services sectors often have difficulty engaging with mental health accommodation requests in good faith, sometimes treating them with skepticism that they would not apply to requests for physical accommodations.
Typical mental health accommodations that courts have recognized as reasonable include modified schedules to allow for therapy appointments, brief additional break periods for anxiety management, adjusted deadlines for tasks affected by cognitive symptoms, temporary telework arrangements during a mental health crisis, and reassignment from a particular supervisor or work environment that is exacerbating symptoms. None of these accommodations require a fundamental change in job duties. They adjust how or when work is done, not what work is required.
An employee whose mental health accommodation request was denied or ignored and who was subsequently fired based on conduct that was a symptom of the unaccommodated condition, such as a depressive episode that led to missed deadlines, an anxiety attack at work, or an emotionally dysregulated response to a stressful situation, may have a disability discrimination claim based on both the failure to accommodate and the termination that followed from it.
What Maryland Employees With Disabilities Should Document From the Moment of Any Accommodation Request
The evidentiary record in a disability discrimination case begins with the accommodation request, not with the termination. From the moment a request is made, an employee should maintain a record of every relevant communication: the written request if one was submitted, the employer’s response or lack of response, any oral conversations about the accommodation with dates and the names of participants, any medical documentation submitted and the employer’s reaction to it, and any changes in how the employee was treated after the request was made.
If possible, make accommodation requests in writing rather than verbally only. An email to HR or a supervisor requesting a specific adjustment creates a timestamped record that the request was made. A verbal request that the employer later denies having received is far more difficult to prove than one confirmed in writing.
Save copies of any performance reviews, disciplinary notices, or warnings that appeared after the accommodation request and note whether similar issues existed before the request without generating documentation. That contrast, a clean record before the accommodation request and a suddenly problematic one afterward, is one of the clearest timing-based indicators of the pretext that disability discrimination attorneys look for.
Wrongful Termination Lawyers in Maryland Who Handle Disability Discrimination Cases
A termination that followed an unaccommodated disability or an ignored accommodation request is not simply a matter of a performance-based firing. It is potentially a chain of ADA and MFEPA violations that began before the termination and that caused the very conduct cited as the reason for it. Evaluating these cases requires understanding both the accommodation law and the employer’s evidentiary strategy, which almost always involves the performance documentation built in the months between the accommodation request and the firing.
The Mundaca Law Firm’s wrongful termination lawyers in Maryland represent employees in disability discrimination cases under the ADA and the MFEPA, including cases involving failure to accommodate, interactive process breakdowns, and terminations based on disability-caused performance failures. Contact The Mundaca Law Firm to schedule a consultation. The MCCR’s 180-day filing deadline begins on the date of the discriminatory act, and identifying the full scope of claims in your situation requires a legal assessment before that window closes.
