Company fired worker, calling her anxiety an ‘issue,’ feds say. ‘Can’t let you work’

A woman working as a laundry technician was fired after requesting temporary leave to address her anxiety, which she had been seeing a doctor for, federal officials say.

“We can’t let you work here when you have an issue,” the woman was told. But she could fully perform the job, according to a complaint filed by the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission.

Her firing led to the EEOC’s lawsuit against West Meade Place, a nursing home facility in Nashville, Tennessee.

Now a jury has ruled in the woman’s favor, years after she was fired in late 2015, the agency said in a Nov. 1 news release. The ruling awards her $6,000 in compensatory damages and $6,146 in pack pay.

West Meade Place was accused of discriminating against the former worker, specifically by violating the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA), because it viewed her anxiety as an “impairment” preventing her from working, according to the EEOC.

“We hope this case causes employers to ensure they have procedures in the workplace explaining employees’ rights under the ADA and train their employees on the ADA,” Faye A. Williams, the EEOC’s regional attorney for its Memphis district office, said in a statement. “If employers fail to do this, there is a high cost to pay to defend these cases.”

McClatchy News contacted attorneys representing West Meade Place for comment on Nov. 4 and was awaiting a response.

The case

In February 2015, West Meade Place hired the woman as a laundry technician for its facility, according to the complaint. Typically, laundry technicians maintain laundry areas, washers and dryers.

Before the woman was hired, she had been receiving anxiety treatment for more than a decade and was taking medication as prescribed by a doctor, according to the EEOC.

Her anxiety limits her “ability to regulate thought processes and emotions” and her “ability to think, to concentrate, to interact with others, and interferes with her daily activities,” the complaint states.

Williams noted how anxiety and depressive disorders have increased by 25% since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic in March 2020, according to the release.

After joining West Meade Place, the company allowed the woman to leave work early for her anxiety flare-ups, according to the complaint.

In November 2015, the woman requested accommodation for her anxiety flare-ups, specifically temporary leave during three days of the month, under the Family Medical Leave Act, according to the EEOC.

In response, the facility’s nursing director said she was ineligible for leave, and this meant she couldn’t perform her job safely, the complaint says.

“We have to either let you go, because you can’t perform it safely, or we have to get a statement from your doctor saying that you do,” the nursing director told the woman, according to the EEOC.

Afterward, the nursing director spoke with the woman’s doctor, who subsequently provided her a note saying the woman “could perform her duties without medical restriction and without any emotional distress,” the complaint states.

However, that same day, the nursing director fired the woman, according to the EEOC.

“This represented a very important case for the EEOC in ensuring protection in the workplace for employees whose employers regard them as having impairments,” Williams said.

More than 40 million U.S. adults are living with an anxiety disorder, according to the National Alliance on Mental Illness.

“In passing the Americans with Disabilities Act more than 32 years ago, Congress recognized that discrimination against individuals with disabilities continues to be a serious and pervasive social problem and that continuing existence of unfair and unnecessary discrimination and prejudice denies people of this community the opportunity to compete on an equal basis,” Edmond Sims, the EEOC’s director for its Memphis District Office, said in a statement.

This story was originally published November 4, 2022 at 9:27 AM with the headline "Company fired worker, calling her anxiety an ‘issue,’ feds say. ‘Can’t let you work’."

Julia Marnin

McClatchy DC

Julia Marnin covers courts for McClatchy News, writing about criminal and civil affairs, including cases involving policing, corrections, civil liberties, fraud, and abuses of power. As a reporter on McClatchy’s National Real-Time Team, she’s also covered the COVID-19 pandemic and a variety of other topics since joining in 2021, following a fellowship with Newsweek. Born in Biloxi, Mississippi, she was raised in South Jersey and is now based in New York State.